balance

This blog will be a bit tougher than my last one...When I used to write, I was mostly a kid-still in school and with little need to be politically correct or write for any particular audience. Although apparently it did help with the ladies...But now, I'm a PC Bible teacher of all things, employee at a Christian school, who is not supposed to discuss controversial things (or do controversial things for that matter) and whose audience will probably mostly consist of my old students...so ya, some balance will be needed, some tact, some couth if you will...But I suppose that is true in all parts of life. Everybody has someone they are, and someone they appear (try) to be, the best people just match up better than most. if that makes sense... Which leads me to my first pop culture discussion...

I recently read a book called "The unlikely disciple: A sinners semester at America's holiest university". The "sinner" is Kevin Roose, a (now) 21 yr old college student, and the "holy university" is Liberty in Lynchburg, VA. you can check out his website here. The gist of the book is that this kid decided to transfer from Brown university to Liberty as a "social experiment". He is more or less a liberal deist and comes from a Quaker family who is not at all pleased by his decision. The family includes two very gay aunts who are worried that Kevin will be brainwashed and indoctrinated into Falwell's homophobic army. Well, you should read the book for yourself, but I loved it. Not to spoil anything, but he mostly is left with a changed view of the young, conservative Christian kids he encounters, and even a bit reluctant to head back to Brown at the end of the semester.

Although Kevin claims he is not an "evangelical Christian" he does believe in God and even gets quite involved in the Liberty life and Falwell's famous Thomas Road Baptist church. The crazy thing though is that for the entire semester at Liberty, he is basically pretending to be holy. He even reads books about how to speak "Christianeze" and how to control one's swearing. But more or less he is pretending to be something he isn't for an entire semester. I would imagine that would wear on someone, but the more I read, I realized he wasn't that much different than most of the kids there at Liberty, or PBA, or JCS, or TKA or any of the other Christian Acronyms I have been involved in, and me for that matter. We wear the hats were supposed to wear. At Liberty your supsed to be a conservative super Christian, and the school cracks down on you if you aren't. AT JCS your supposed to be a "cool Christian" so most kids talk holy and walk worldly, and thats accepted because that is what your supposed to be. IF your too Christian or too worldly though you risk falling outside the range of the cool kids. Anyway, it just got me thinking a lot. These last few years I have been tough in a lot of ways, trying to be real and vulnerable to my kids, but not wanting to be the worlds biggest hypocrite. It takes something out of you. Anyway, food for thought.

So I think I'm serious about this new blog. Spent awhile crafting this one and even used spellcheck. So weigh in, read the book, stay tuned. Peace.