This
weekend I’ve been reading the book Unlikely
Disciple by Kevin Roose. In a nutshell, Roose was a student at Brown who
had an encounter with some far-right Christians that got him thinking about the
God-divide. He enrolled in Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University for a semester
and pretended to be an evangelical Christian in an attempt to see the other
side of the divide and then wrote about it. As a Christian, even a politically
moderate Christian, I disagree with a lot of his views, but many of his
observations of conservative evangelical culture hit uncomfortably close to
home.
Particularly,
his observations on the sheltered nature of the education system at Liberty
have gotten me thinking. Throughout the book he notes a distinct lack of
professors encouraging students to really question what they believe in order
to learn more about it. Rather, the usual stance is that you should actually
ignore evidence against your beliefs and just stick to your guns. Roose and many
of his peers at Liberty see this as contradictory to a good liberal arts
education, and I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing.
In
my own Christian college experience at George Fox University, I’ve been
presented with a pretty wide range of beliefs from my professors, and an even
wider range in the material we study (I’m taking a class on the Beat generation
for crying out loud, it’s hard to get much further from traditional
Christianity). I’ve heard some fairly negative responses from my family and
people at my church about this, one or two even wondering aloud if the
university should be considered Christian if so many liberal views are held. As
an advocate of engaging my faith on an intellectual level, I have to disagree
with them.
Perhaps
the biggest concern my friends and family have voiced when I tell them about
the less traditional aspects of GFU is that it may drive students to leave the
faith; like teaching us about the various stances on evolutionary theory
besides young-earth creationism versus atheistic evolutionism might turn us
from worshipping from Christ to praising Richard Dawkins. I don’t feel like I
should have to point out how ridiculous that sounds, but apparently it’s
necessary. Many of these young adults, myself included, have been raised in a
pretty sheltered environment where our exposure to alternative philosophies has
been severely limited. That isn’t going to last forever. Sooner or later, most
of us are going to find ourselves in environments where our ideology won’t be
the majority, and if we haven’t been prepped at all it’s going to come as a bit
of a shock.
College
seems like the ideal place to get that exposure, especially if it’s a Christian
college. We’re young adults, which
means it’s time for us to grow out of the faith of our elders if we haven’t yet
and figure out what we believe for ourselves. College is the time when we’re
figuring the rest of our lives out anyway, so it seems fitting that we should
hash out what we believe in regard to religion as well.
In
fact, I think it’s healthy to question what we believe and weigh it against
other beliefs. Is a faith mature if a person is unwavering on what they believe
but has no actual idea why they believe it beyond it being what they grew up
with? Why should we apply more rigorous study to science or other studies than
we do to our faith? If I go through the first 22 years of my life without
looking at other beliefs without dismissing them offhandedly and then enter the
real world where people around me believe those things, how am I going to
function alongside them? Better yet, how am I supposed to witness to them, as I
believe I am called to do?
I
want my faith to be intellectual as well as spiritual and emotional. I enjoy
questioning what God says and growing to understand it better through that. And
if my views should change, as they have quite a bit, I think that’s a good
thing.
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