Sunday, February 29, 2004
(6:35 PM) | Anonymous:
On being an ass.
I decided to call out Dr. Leth and Dr. Bowling and for posterity sake Dr. Thompson (though I respect him) because of rumors that I perceived as truths from those on and off the Dialog council. Unfortunately this kind of head on, balls out confrontational style has backfired once again and I, like so many times in my life, am playing the ass.I have always been frustrated that students at Olivet who disagree with the administration simply "bend over and take it," which is part of the reason I left and part of the reason I constantly make an ass out of myself to those who still find themselves in the bent over position. I find it sad that we all want to avoid doing pointless acts of rebellion to the point that we will never know how to partake in meaningful rebellion against any structure. It’s not just a problem in the Religion department at Olivet Nazarene University; it is a problem throughout the whole Church universal! The entire Church sprang up from the fertile soil of rebellion but you wouldn't know that the Church used to matter from its current fruit.
It's through the pointless little acts, like the move to e-mail a listserv and make radical claims without having any facts, that we learn the embarrassment it is to be rebellious in any way. In this modern culture where our rationality is dictated and creativity is regulated to the altar of the star there is a certain embarrassment when attempt to criticize those who have all the cards in their hands, very much hidden from your view. Adam says that the death of something like Dialog is survivable and he is right, to those that Dialog mattered there will be little noticeable difference in their lives as they will still be the ability to eat and sleep and work. Though this non-event and its survivability says much about the administration of Olivet it says more about the students of theology who have stood idly by as boring old men have dictated their educations to them. We should have stood up in the beginning and demanded honesty from an administration that refuses to be honest, we should have stood up in classrooms and called out professors who were teaching dead words to a dead crop of pastors, we should have staged a useless protest in Dr. Bowling's office when the graduate program in Religion was taken away from Dr. Thompson. Even if none of it would have made a difference, even if these would be pointless acts that is what religious people are supposed to do!
But, like good ‘church’ people we did nothing.
So I am an ass, which is of course regrettable but very survivable, but I wish I had been more of an ass.
