The Day My Heathen Public Education Saved Me

I haven't been able to post recently, as I've been working on my "Defining Experience" paper for my educational philosophy course. The writing prompt is simple: describe a specific event that has had a major impact on my worldview or approach to living. Since this is pretty much the focus of my blog anyway, I thought I'd share a condensed rough draft here. Perhaps by posting this it will provide a better perspective for my readers regarding why I think/write the way I do. Here it is:

Everyone hated Dr. Kaylor. A large percentage of freshmen at the University of Northern Iowa him as their professor for Humanities I during the fall semester, and I was one of them. In a lecture hall of three to four hundred students, he was a belligerent, unhelpful, pompous jerk who enjoyed talking above his students, calling on them individually in order to mock their answers, and requiring of them impossible exams for which there was no adequate study method. He was Satan; and I, along with my fellow freshmen, were in the depths of hell. UNI was a great place, but Dr. Kaylor was too much to take. He was the one blemish (albeit a huge one) in a land of post-secondary Paradise. Somehow, someway, he’s also the starting point for the worldview I espouse today.

I walked into my tenure at UNI full of confidence, though I’m not sure any of it was well-founded. Though a good student in high school with a high ACT score and a class rank of 3^rd, I never really had to work for any of my academic success. I did have to work for any athletic success I achieved; but alas, that “success” was becoming merely an above-average athlete at best, good but not great. Still, I was confident in my work ethic and desire for learning, and I also had confidence in my faith.

I grew up in a serious Christian Reformed home; both my father and mother were raised in this denomination. Church was on Sunday morning and Sunday evening, and Wednesday nights were for the youth church gathering called AWANA. There was no alcohol in the house or ever consumed by my parents, we didn't shop on Sundays, and meals were ended with an evening devotional. I was born Christian, raised Christian, and behaved Christian. I acted the right way, stayed out of trouble, knew basic Biblical tenets, and was sure of my salvation. John Calvin himself would have been proud (though Jonathan Edwards might have questioned my “conversion” experience). While I was in no way “on fire” for the faith, I had that confidence I’ve written of that I had that part of my life figured out. Enter Dr. Kaylor.

My defining experience occurred in the middle of a lecture in which Dr. Kaylor was torturing students, demanding them to respond to his questions in this expansive lecture hall, then torturing them for the answers they provided for everyone to see. The topic on this particular day happened to be religion.

I would venture to guess that most students in that room were much like me at the time. Most of us, I’m willing to wager, had never been challenged in this way before; we were waiting for the fill-in-the-blank study guide with all the answers to study ten minutes before exams. We were sure we were somehow being mistreated, as our immediate educational needs (i.e. handholding) were not being met. We knew that Dr. Kaylor didn’t have a shred of credibility, as so many students were struggling in the class. We knew exactly who to blame. None of this absolves him. He still, to the best of my recollection, was an ass, and a bad teacher to boot. However, in an effort to paint a true picture, I must include the pampered mindset that many of us went into that room holding during our first semester of life at the university. We were incredulous at the idea that we must take this man’s cruelty and educational malpractice.

I’m sure I also fit the typical demographic of the classroom as an Evangelical Christian who was raised that way and had experienced very few challenges to that faith. We believed that Jesus is good and true; our traditions and teachings are right; and more importantly, that God = love. The ideal of George Carlin’s “Buddy Christ” from the film Dogma was alive and well in our hearts.

I firmly believe Dr. Kaylor knew all of this and that he felt like rocking the boat a little bit. I also believe he took great pleasure in not only rocking that boat, but shaking 18 year olds out of their own religious boat entirely, never to return to the safety of the cabin. On this particular day, questioning members of the class about the goodness of God, Dr. Kaylor had armed himself with obscure quotes from the Bible that suggested a wrathful, angry God, a God who was unfair, full of spite, and a murderer. Students in the class were taking great offense. The sad part about it, though, was that no one had any kind of retort. We all got eaten up by an atheist’s ability to quote Scripture. I kept my mouth shut and laid low. Defeated, I limped my bruised and battered religious confidence back to my dorm room after class, questioning everything.

This is the moment that changed if not my trajectory, then at least my resolve. I decided that if I had no answers regarding my faith, no reason for what I believed, and no knowledge of the central text of the faith to make me capable of defending my positions, then I had no religion. If I was to be a person of faith, I must get serious about it. I put every belief on the table, ready to sort into either a “discard,” “keep,” or “update” file. Then I started reading. I haven’t stopped since.

This is not the typical “testimony” heard so often that includes deep falls into an abyss of casual sex, belligerent drinking, recreational drug use, and Buddha worship. I didn’t become a different person, nor did I make a lot of life-altering mistakes. I simply quit accepting traditions of the church in which I grew up at face value. I no longer wanted to “believe” anything: I wanted to know. I wanted answers that were more solid than “because that’s how I was raised” or “I just don’t think a loving God would do that.” How exactly should I treat the Sabbath? What’s with this predestination stuff? Infant baptism or believer baptism? What is my ultimate purpose? What does real faith look like? Real prayer? Why should I pray if God already knows what I need? Can the Bible be trusted?

One of the best practices this ordeal taught me to do is seek out smart people and ask a lot of questions. I tried to surround myself with others who were as passionate as I was about seeking truth but had been doing it for a lot longer than I had. I was rarely the smartest individual in the room, and I didn’t need to be. I wanted to learn, to listen, to adapt and achieve clarity of thought. I began meeting with a mentor of sorts, and we discussed theology and leadership theory. I studied and discussed in my free time, and there was no shortage of opportunity for this on a university campus. I talked to people who pushed my thinking and who also had a significantly different worldview from my own. I no longer wanted to be sheltered, to listen only to those with whom I agreed.

The journey continues today. I have great confidence in what I know, as well as a willingness to re-sort the piles on my figurative table to suit the new knowledge and experience that I gain. Emerson wrote in “Self-Reliance” that, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. . . With consistency a great soul simply has nothing to do.” I’ve given up consistency of thought for the rewards of passionate yet developing thought.

This quest for ultimate truth has led me on a winding path that maintains vision of the mountain, no matter how far to the right or the left it meanders. Although it has been a truly academic experience, the knowledge gained has led to intense and fulfilling emotional responses to the goodness of a God that I now know instead of claim to know. I am wiser, more humble, and starving for the truths that I still have not yet come to understand.