Let me start out by saying that I love my college. The students and faculty for the most part are pretty amazing. However, I have some big issues in the realm of the spiritual and recently some of this have been driving me bonkers, so I figured maybe if I wrote about what bothered me about this school it would make me feel better. So here it goes.
Three Times A Week:I have to attend chapel three times a week. I don't really have a problem with this because, hey it is a Christian school what do you expect?! I do however have a great problem with the contents of some of the chapels we've had this year.
I have been finding more and more how difficult it is to attend a Christian college of a different denomination than myself. It is really a excellent experience for me. I will admit that I have lived in a rather sheltered Baptist world and really didn't mix a lot with other denominations. Chapels here have been so different in so many ways and not many of those ways for the best. Many times I get the feeling that the purpose of a majority of the chapels is to get people's emotions riled up so that students become "on fire" for God. Sometimes they will show video clips of tragic events in the beginning of chapel but then never return to the video clip, this says to me that the only reason they showed it was to make people a little more emotionally receptive. But the tricky thing about using emotions and feelings to drive spiritual zealousness is that there comes a time where emotions and feelings will fade. Then what? What motivation have you to continue on the right path? I am not saying that emotions have no place in religion because if that were true then we basically be a bunch of heartless robots. But Emotions can be terribly deceiving and you cannot let them control your course of action because they will lead you in the wrong direction. Another thing that really bugged was this one particular chapel that we had a guest speaker and he was doing a little "role playing" thing and pretending to be Paul after he wrote Corinthians. This is all well and good aside from the fact that the whole "role playing" thing is a little elementary and the little fact that he messed with Paul's convictions. The speaker made Paul sound remorseful that he had spoken so strongly to the Corinthians and that he wished he could take the letter back because he had exaggerated the situation and now the Corinthians were going to be offended. Can you say politically correct????? The Christmas chapel...Oh my goodness don't even get me started on that one!! At the beginnig of chapel I looked down and there was this girl painting this random strips of blue and purple. Very strange she had like a spot light on her the entire chapel and it didn't make any sense. The chapel consisted of worship(random songs that only a 1/5 of the people actually knew) and special music and very poorly performed short skit. At the end of chapel the girl finally finished her random painting and it turned out to be the virgin Mary, but you would have never figured this out unless Dr. Lennox hadn't finished chapel with prayer and mentioned the painting of the Virgin Mary. It was so dumb. Not all the chapels have been terrible and I do want to tell you about an particularly amazing chapel that we had recently, because all bad gets boring and this story deserves to be told! Recently we had a man from Moody come and spoke in chapel about homosexuality. Sounds pretty normal right, preacher comes in talks about how homosexuality is evil and how those who practice it will burn in the deepest circle of hell. This guy didn't do that he merely gave his testimony, how he was saved and through God's grace totally changed from his homosexual lifestyle and after many years struggle became a youth pastor with a wife and a couple sweet kids. It was definitely the most fascinating, mind boggling testimony I have ever heard. God's grace is so amazing! And with his strength you can really turn your life around no matter how deep you are into any sin. I never struggled with homosexuality myself but the essence of his testimony could be applied to any area in my life that I struggle in. His testimony was just like...Wow. There really are no words to describe how truly amazing it was.
I've Searched High, I've Searched Low:I have been searching for a good church to attend here or in the towns surrounding. I am rather limited to where I can go because I don't exactly have a car and only can go where I can find a ride to or if that falls through than the I have to go to the College Wesleyan Church which I do not what to attend for the rest of my years here. I really really want to find a good baptist church and there are several in the surrounding area, but Baptist students attending WU are in the minority and Baptists with cars are even harder to find, needless to say I haven't been able to get to any of them. The churches I have been to where basically Wesleyan and a form of Charismatic. The preaching at the College Wesleyan Church was pretty good and doctrinally sound, but I found that in his sermons he would read a half a chapter or just a few verses at the very beginning and then base his entire sermon of one or at most two of the verses that he read from. He didn't draw in any other verses from other places in the Bible. This style of preaching really really bugged me. I guess I feel that if you are going to preach on a topic, which the pastor was, that he should be able to drawn in more scripture than a verse or two. Another church I attended was non-denominational with a charismatic leaning sang for an hour straight with sometimes a little half prayer, half speech in between songs. And when it was finally time for the sermon, the preacher didn't even make any sense whatsoever. I don't think that I have ever heard a more pointless sermon in my life. And the sermon only lasted like a half an hour. I'm not one of those people who are bond by tradition with set limits on how long worship should be and how long the sermon, but come on worship is very important but a whole hour of it?? I can't sing that long. Medicine or not my lungs don't like it. I ended up sitting down after 40 minutes because I thought I was going to pass out. That is not COOL!!
Say What??Some of the discussions I have gotten into here with some of my Shatty Sisters have also been about topics I had never really debated about or expected to debate about. For instance, I don't even remember how this was brought up, but I got into a very long discussion about speaking in tongues. (I have been researching this topic heavily so if you have any good resources send them my way). The ways this girl was explaining the reasons as to why she spoke in tongues did not make any sense to me at all. I don't even think that she understands why she speaks in tongues. She told me that she believes that if you don't speak in tongues then you have not been completely saved. How can you be half-way saved? Answer: you can't! It's all or nothing! An even more controversial topic around here is the issue of eternal security. That's an interesting one that I could yammer about forever but however I'm running out of time. I'll try to get into these issues a little deeper later.
Stupid World Changers:This college is also a very liberal place for a Christian college. The variety in the students is staggering. You've got your extreme gothics and your extreme preps and everyone in between and they bring their very different opinions with them. In my oh so beloved world changers class we had this very long and annoying discussion about this girl who previously attended WU who just happened to be a Indiana Pacer's Pacemate. Anyway. My breakout leader loved to get us into long annoying debates. The Pacemate issue was one of them. Should WU allow this girl to continue as a student here if she was violating the dress code and no dancing policy at her job outside of school. Basically this one idiot guy in my class said that, even though she was dressing very immodestly and doing slutty choreographed dance moves, it was ok because she was reaching people for Jesus with her testimony of staying away from the party scene. The guy went on to say that the way a girl dressed really doesn't matter, she could go around completely in the nude and it wouldn't be a sin for her to cause her brother to stumble because it is all the guy's fault for looking. Also the class decided that the dance outfits the girl wore were fitting to the occasion therefore appropriate, like a bathing suit is appropriate to wear on the beach. Basically my world changers class agreed that sometimes you have to find new ways to reach people for Jesus, but I just can't seem to get over the whole provocative dancing thing. I've seen the Pacemates perform and I'm a girl and I was very uncomfortable. A lot of the people who agreed that it was ok had never seen the Pacemates perform. And at the end I was basically told not to be so closed minded. Am I closed minded to think that even if a girl is trying to reach people for Jesus she shouldn't be violating God's commanments for modesty and decent behavior? Is that closed minded? Come on really. My favorite movie is Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you have to be open minded to like that. hehe. This little incident happened like a month ago and I'm still really really annoyed that I was called closed minded. Does anyone here think I'm closed minded? I really want to know. Ok I'm done ranting and raving and carrying on. woof. I'M DONE WITH WORLD CHANGERS FOREVER!!!!!! I DON'T THINK I'VE EVER BEEN MORE EXCITED IN MY LIFE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So other than all that I really like my college. I'll put out a more positive issue fo Tricky Business For a Baptist Girlie at a later date. Anyway I probably won't write anymore on my blog until after I get back from Christmas break :( So I love you all and have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!! I love to say Merry Christmas just because it is so politically incorrect! hehehe!!!
