Are you ever going to fully explain your animosity for Regent University?I debated whether Good Friday was the best time to answer this question, but considering Easter is all about redemption and grace, there is probably no better time.
No, I am not. That is a lot of water under the bridge. Regent was a miserable experience and a poor decision on my part, but I chalked it up as something I had to suffer through in order to earn a law degree. I ranted quite a lot in the early days after my retina detached and my colon ruptured because not only had it appeared I had suffered for nothing because not only I could no longer have a career, but the university took parting shots at me.
They towed my car, lost where it had been sent, and set me a $ 2,000 bill for towing and storage, residents of my apartment complex took furniture I could not go to Vitginia to retrieve for free without a word of thanks, and my old roommate, who was a bigot’s bigot, demanded I give him a character reference as someone whom he lived with for a while even though I would not have recommended him for anything but scrubbing gulag toilets in Siberia. All of this occurred days after I nearly diedfrom the colon rupture.
You can see why I would have both animosity for the university and a struggle of faith in general. None of that counts the experiences I had as a student.
I had the Eye as an outlet to vent, so I did. At one point, I envisioned a project similar to William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale, an expose on how the secularism at Yale effected Buckley’s Christian faith while he was a student. I did write quite a bit, posted and not, but most of it was a lot of lashing out over hurt feelings and not centered on the failure to uphold Christian principles, for which I was and still am as guilty as anyone.
Like I said, that is a lot of water under the bridge. All that occurred in another life. I have way too much other burdens to bear now than to fret over a university long since faded from memory to be seriously burnt by it any longer. I can make some general observations, just because they are relevant to Christians everywhere. Through reflection, I have theorized the three root causes of my distaste.
First, many Christians get the idea they never have to say they are sorry for their actions because they have Divine forgiveness and do not think they need yours. It makes them reckless and callous with others. This life may only be your temporary home, but you are still here for a while. Thethings you do havea ripple effect. You cannot dismiss that much of the Bible regulates behavior here on Earth, which implies, forgiveness through grace or not, the things you do matter.
Second, you cannot be judgmental without being a hypocrite. I am sorry, but it is simply not possible, so knock it off. I like to think of it as everyone’s life is like a flower garden. Everyone ought to tend to their own flowers to make them as healthy as possible. When you take time out to examine everyone else’s garden, pointing out their weeds, you are giving time for your unattended garden to become overrun with weeds yourself. What do you have in the end? Insulted friends and your on garden choked with weeds. In other words, nothing.
Finally, there is no reason to be proud of ignorance. I have never met a group of people more proud to be shut off from knowledge than fundamentalist Christians. But in my defense, I have only met a smattering of Muslims over the years. They probably take the gold trophy, but I cannot award it to them based on personal experience. Blinders, illogic, willful ignorance, intolerance of other beliefs, confirmation bias to support their own beliefs--all dangerous things that can turn off non-Chritians and Christians alike from the faith.
I am sure I could relate these things more to my personal experiences at Regent, but they would be more constructive to apply to Christian life in general.
