Christian Higher Ed Goes Lower

Jesus encountered people who claimed to possess faith, but who rejected Him. He said to them, according to John chapter 8:
(42)... "If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and came from God; nor have I come of Myself, but He sent Me.
43 Why do you not understand My speech? Because you are not able to listen to My word.
44 You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.

We have to evaluate whether or not we individually as believers in Christ or corporately as the Church as "listening" to God's Word. That implies that we are not just making stuff up about spiritual concepts and then trying to attach snippets of Scripture or twist the Word in order to conform to our ideas. True discipleship means that we start with the Word first, and then allow that living Word to penetrate our thinking and reform our hearts, so that we might truly know the principles of God.

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In 2nd Timothy chapter 3, Paul offers a list of behaviors that are indicative of an unhealthy spiritual state, saying that those who practice them possess "a form of godliness" but they are "denying its power." He describes them in verse 7 as "always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth."  He continues:

8 Now as Jannes and Jambres resisted Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, disapproved concerning the faith;
9 but they will progress no further, for their folly will be manifest to all, as theirs also was.
10 But you have carefully followed my doctrine, manner of life, purpose, faith, longsuffering, love, perseverance...

We have to be cautious to remember that just because an institution wears the label, "Christian," there may be areas of danger.  Or, it may not reflect a Christian worldview perspective at all.

A situation involving what is described by ReligionNews.com as an "evangelical school" in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Calvin University, which is sponsored by the Christian Reformed Church, is illustrative of the inroads that the progressive agenda has made. 

The article notes that:

The school sponsors a support group for gay students, gave an alumni award to an LGBTQ graduate and last year saw a gay undergrad elected as student body president.

But after a Calvin professor officiated a wedding last fall for an LGBTQ staffer at a campus-based research center, putting both employees in violation of school policy, school leaders tried to resolve the matter quietly. The Center for Social Research, part of the school since the 1970s, was allowed to spin off and the staffer was able to stay.

But the staffer at the center who led to CSR's move has now left. The report says that...

Chimes, the Calvin student newspaper, broke news about the reason for the split. Chimes later interviewed Nicole Sweda, the Calvin staffer whose marriage led the CRS to leave Calvin.

“I’m not going to be ashamed for being queer,” Sweda, who ultimately quit her job in order to speak openly about her wedding, said in the Chimes interview. “I’m not going to be ashamed for being married to Annica.”

The professor, Joseph Kuilema, who is an assistant professor of sociology and social work at the school, is also in danger of losing his contract.

The article notes that:

Provost Noah Toly did confirm that all faculty and staff, including those at the center, are required to follow the school’s employment policies, which bar sex outside of a marriage between a man and a woman. He also said that hiring managers and supervisors are required to enforce the policy.

Also, according to Religion News, in the Christian Reformed Church, "A report approved in 2016 bans pastors and church leaders from officiating weddings of same-sex couples. That report allows church members to take part in such weddings as long as they realize that such weddings are sinful."

Toly notes, "Joining a community or institution almost always means inheriting positions and submitting to rules made by others, even if we don’t agree with all the rules, wouldn’t make those rules ourselves, or want to change the rule,” adding, “This need to live within a doctrinal framework and set of rules we don’t make is heightened in a confessional institution. Colleges and universities aren’t the only places where this happens, but they’re great places for students to grapple with this reality.”

So, what was described as an "accommodation" for one of the same-sex marriage "partners" has apparently backfired - she just had to go public, proud and loud, with her sinful union.  She has left, and the professor will likely follow her out the door.  You now have a research center that has separated from the sponsoring institution for no apparent reason.  The consequences of departing from God's law.

But, nevertheless, Christian colleges are being duped into trying to accommodate LGBTQ students. 

Meanwhile, Calvin has drawn attention because of the actions of another of its professors - her name is Kristen Kobes Du Mez, the author of the provocative book called, Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Tom Gilson, writing at The Stream, in response to the book, accurately declares:

We do have problems, and we have since Paul wrote about it in his first letter to the Corinthians — not to mention a whole lot preceding it in the Old Testament. It’s called sin, and it happens in the Church. Through all my reading of church history, I’ve concluded there has to be a God, or we’d have blown ourselves to pieces by now. Still God works through us anyway, and the world is very definitely better off for His Church (though that’s a discussion for another day).

He continues:

So Du Mez could have taken an accurate view on evangelical issues, and written something worth reading. Maybe the sin explanation isn’t sexy enough for her. Or not sexist enough. Or not simplistic enough. Instead she wrote 300 pages of material perfect for anyone who’s already convinced and wants to say, “See! I told you so!” — people who already “knew” it, in other words.

He cites the author as saying that the Church has "replaced the Jesus of the Gospels with a vengeful warrior Christ."  According to Gilson, she is bothered by the phrase "servant leadership."  As an example, according to Gilson, Du Mez claims that...

...Promise Keepers’ teachings of servant leadership “helped salvage a patriarchal order,” she says. “By promising intimacy in exchange for power, servant leadership passed off authority as humility, ensuring that patriarchal authority would endure. … As far as critics were concerned, this was more insidious than a straightforward power grab.”

Her beef, plain and simple, seems to be with male leadership in the Church.  According to Anne Kennedy, writing at the website of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood:

Wending her way past Elisabeth Elliot, Phyllis Schlafly, Ollie North and into the bygone notoriety of the Moral Majority’s Jerry Falwell Sr., James Dobson, and the LaHayes, all the way through into the excitement and controversy of the Young Restless and Reformed, to Doug Wilson and this journal’s founding body, Du Mez tries to fit everybody in.

According to Kennedy: 

John Eldredge’s Jesus, she insists “more closely resembled William Wallace than either Mother Teresa or Mister Rogers” (174). And in one of the most underwhelming “gotchas” in the history of Christianity, Du Mez reports that Elisabeth Elliot believed that “God created male and female as complementary opposites” (65).

Du Mez even takes aim at Billy Graham; Kennedy quotes Du Mez as claiming that "Graham believed that God had cursed women to be under man’s rule," and for that reason, he believed that wives must submit to husbands’ authority." Du Mez continues:

Graham acknowledges that this would come as a shock to certain ‘dictatorial wives,’ and he didn’t hesitate to offer Christian housewives helpful tips: When a husband comes home from work, run out and kiss him. ‘Give him love at any cost. Cultivate modesty and the delicacy of youth. Be attractive.’ Keep a clean house and don’t ‘nag and complain all the time.’ He had advice for men, too. A man was ‘God’s representative’ — the spiritual head of the household, ‘the protector’ and ‘provider of the home.’

But, as Kennedy points out:

God did not “curse women to be under man’s rule.” He placed them there as a gracious gift as part of the created order. Adam — before the Fall — was to have dominion over the animals and steward the earth. Eve was given to him as help, cut out of his very side so that he was not able to accomplish his task without her. The two together, and the order in which they were created, reflect the image of God in the world. In other words, the patriarchalism of Adam was baked into the cake itself. The curse of the Fall was not the biblical articulation of headship, but the corruption wrought by Adam’s sin. His “headship” devolved into tyranny and her “help” into a grasping coup for power. The result was pain, toil, and the unhappiness that goes along with the work of both men and women as they kick against the goads. Paul recaptures the beauty of the original order in Ephesians 5:21–33, a text fewer and fewer Americans are aware even exists.

We now have a lexicon of terms to negatively describe the Biblical role of men, including "patriarchy," which is apparently a huge problem, "toxic masculinity," and more.  Rather than seeing the complementary nature of the relationship between male and female, she seems to reinforce the concept of male oppression.  Seems to me, it is a redefinition of gender roles as laid out in the Bible, and a threat to the concept of gender itself, which we are seeing throughout our culture.

Which gets us back to the progressive views that are causing problems at the school where Du Mez teaches, Calvin University - skewed gender philosophy, a perversion of God's established order, a redefinition of marriage that runs counter to that beautiful passage in Ephesians 5 about marriage as a representation between Christ and His bride.

Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis wrote about the school about a year and a half ago, after the student body president "came out" as a homosexual. Ken stated that "Calvin University has compromised God’s Word for years," and wrote:

What we see happening at this compromising, liberal-leaning college is a consequence of departing from the authority of the Word of God from the very first verse. We are seeing this phenomenon happening at many so-called Christian institutions, and it will sadly only continue as these colleges as well as seminaries refuse to take a stand on the authority of the Word of God in all areas—beginning in Genesis. Unless they repent and return to the foundation of God’s Word, Calvin University and others like it will become the Yales, Princetons, and Harvards of tomorrow—schools that once taught God’s Word and were founded by Christians, but are now thoroughly pagan and secular.

This is graduation season, and many high school seniors are preparing for their next step. Some will discover that the "Christian" college they will be attending have allowed secular ideas to rule the day. We can remember that generally, just because a college or organization has the "Christian" stamp on it or the word "Christian" in its name does not mean it is committed to following Christ's teachings. 

We are seeing a tremendous blurring of the lines on gender and sexuality today.  What was once viewed as impermissible seems to be more commonplace. And, while there are those that claim to be "enlightened," like the Gnostics of old that Robin Schumacher was calling out on yesterday's Meeting House, views are being expressed that do not line up with Scripture, and the deeper meaning is just another excuse for immoral behavior.

And, you have the self-appointed critics of the Church and Christianity that are continuing to hammer their tired phrases and philosophies, claiming to be "enlightened" on matters of race and gender, but buying in to the enemy's ploy to divide the Church and to ultimate render Christianity ineffective. Because the teachings of Scripture are the real enemy to them. We have to be discerning like never before so that we are not deceived by philosophical schemes.