"Well, crying isn't gonna bring your dog back . . . unless your tears smell like dog food. So you can either sit there crying and eating can after can of dog food until your tears smell enough like dog food to make your dog come back or you can go out there and find your dog."
- Homer J. Simpson
Sunday, May 31, 2009
There's an interesting article on NPR about Kevin Roose, who posed as an evangelical Christian student at Liberty University for a semester to do research for his book The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University. His observations and responses in the article turned out more edifying than I would have expected.
Here's an excerpt:
Roose tried to follow all the rules, even buying a Christian self-help book to help him avoid cursing. For a couple weeks he walked around campus saying "Glory be!" and "Mercy!" Turns out Liberty students don't actually talk like that, Roose reports.[H/T These guys]
"They would look at me like, 'Who is this guy, and what strange, isolated home school did he come from?'" Roose laughs.
Fellow students knew Roose had transferred from Brown, but few suspected his secular background — and none knew he was writing a book. Once the semester was over, he had to come clean with his new friends.
"It was one of the hardest things I had ever done, because these had become some of my best friends," Roose says. He expected them to feel betrayed — and expected to do a lot of apologizing. Instead, he says, something amazing happened.
"Everyone forgave me — immediately," he says. "It was unreal how quickly their surprise turned to real compassion and excitement."
"They were all excited about the book and excited that I had given Liberty a fair look, and an open-minded look — instead of just doing a drive-by article."
But there was just a little disappointment. "They thought, given the semester with me, that they would have done a better job of converting me," Roose says.
They may have done a better job than they thought. Even though he's back at Brown, Roose still tries to pray every day. He says the act of prayer changes him, referring to the writings of Christian author Oswald Chambers.
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Comments on "The Unlikely Disciple":
4. Bill
- 05/31/2009 8:24 pm CDT
Wondering why this came as a surprise....;-)
It's not a surprise to me that his experience (at least as reported in this short article) seemed to include friendship and mutual respect and forgiveness. It's more surprising that we got to hear about it that way. These days (and, sadly, many times especially in the Christian blogosphere) Christians are parodied and pilloried without mercy
I have no doubt that the book will contain plenty of negative things about his experience. But what was reported here was very . . . nice and good to hear.
6. Bob Sacamento
- 06/01/2009 8:33 am CDT
Actually, I myself would love to do a piece on hyprocritical, lame, evangelical weirdoes, because they almost sent me to a padded room during my school days and, God forgive me, I am still wanting payback.
But, anyway, those guys aren't the whole story, and this story is good to hear.
An excellent book along similar lines was written a few years ago called The Church on the World's Turf. The author hung out, but with full upfront disclosure of his purposes, with an Intervarsity group somewhere in Canada for about a year. He was pretty fair minded and had some interesting insights. His new friends were also disappointed that they didn't manage to convert him.
This was the author's master's thesis or dissertation or something so it's published by an academic press and kind of expensive. But worthwhile, if you can shell out the bucks.
8. Bob Sacamento
- 06/01/2009 10:03 am CDT
I am sure Lib. Baptist requires a statement of faith from the faculty it hires, but not so sure about whether it requires one from the students who enroll there. Can probably find out on their website, but I don't have time to look it up.
Of course, it was false pretenses either way. I don't think any college would admit a guy who forthrightly said, "I'm wanting to take up one of the admissions slots you could give to someone else because I just want to come for one semester and write a book about your place." But, oh well. I've see worse.
10. GinH
- 06/01/2009 10:28 am CDT
This is as good a story as any to ask this question which is way off subject but wondering if any of you know the answer:
What is the context of the verse in II Cor 6 about being unequally yolked?
I, of course, have always been taught it was about not marrying a non-christian, so expected it to be in verses on that kind of thing.
Of course, it's not. It looks like it is addressing mixing Christian worship with pagan worship on first read in context, but there's a lot going on there and I just thought I'd ask you guys if any of you had studied it in depth for a sermon.
I know I'm being lazy, but I'm trying to get a quick answer because I'm quite sure it is using it out of context to use it as a proof text for why Christians should pull out of the public school system.
Right? Please tell me I'm right.
11. Jared
- 06/01/2009 11:44 am CDT
For the first two years of Element's ministry, we consisted almost exclusively of those burned by fundy/legalistic churches from their past and those who had zero church background. An odd mix, but the gospel is a universal antidote, so it worked out well.
But one of the things we focused on a lot with the recovering churchfolk was bitterness and reverse Pharisaism.
I think bitterness and reverse Pharisaism is, in all honesty, one of the root causes of the emerging church movement.
13. Bob Sacamento
- 06/01/2009 12:36 pm CDT
Jared,
But one of the things we focused on a lot with the recovering churchfolk was bitterness and reverse Pharisaism. I think bitterness and reverse Pharisaism is, in all honesty, one of the root causes of the emerging church movement.
Agree with you here about the emergents, and about reverse Pharisaism in general. I'm just saying, well, what am I saying? My point was more of a personal mini-rant than an actual "position." I did suffer and the scars still hurt on rainy days and I just want to say it every once in a while, especially because not much has changed in these legalistic groups in the past twenty years.
But since I've opened this can of worms, I agree that there are alot of younger Christians who want to get mixed up in this fight just because it's the "cool" thing to do right now. And to follow the "cool" even at the expense of truth or even love is a perennial temptation for the young (and some not so young), even young Christians. Yes, we can pat most of the young Christian hipsters on their little toe heads and then tell them to go back to their sandboxes while the adults talk. Yes. But, once the adults start talking, there is alot of real, not cool, pain out there, and I think a book or article on it might be a good way to deal with it, depending on how "healthy" the author is and how it is written.
You know, if I keep going on, I'm going to start rambling. ("Start", he says?) Can comment later if you want to keep this "sub-thread" going.
14. Bob Sacamento
- 06/01/2009 12:40 pm CDT
GinH,
You're right to a certain degree. The oft quoted passage has no explicit reference to marriage whatsoever. However, the logic of the passage, when applied to marriage, is seen by many as prohibiting the parriage of a Christian to a non-.
I think the logic itself may be a little tenuous but, from my experience, it's waaaay better for Christians to marry within the faith.
16. Bob Sacamento
- 06/01/2009 4:50 pm CDT
GinH,
Oh yeah, I see the rest of your priginal comment now. Elsewhere, Paul says, "Be in the world but not of the world." So, no, you can't automatically go from "be not unequally yoked" to "get your kids out of the public schools now!" That kind of thinking, applied consistently, will have us living like the Amish in ten seconds flat.
From what I hear going on in some public school districts, I would encourage some parents to think strongly about what alternative education they could provide their kids. But there is alot of variation in public schools and there's no way to make a simple rule that will apply to Christians clear across the country. I doubt San Francisco schools will have all that much in common with the ones in Terra Haute, Indiana or Pascagoula, Mississippi.
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And it takes an "outsider" to say fundy Christian college kids are actually cool.
I commend both Roose for his honest assessment and his Christian classmates for representing Christ well.
If Roose had been a Christian "undercover," I'm betting dollars to donuts the "expose" would be about lame, culturally unhip college kids.