One of my Croatian students misspoke in his paper, and said "a crash of values" rather than a "clash" of values. But I think he was right even though he was wrong. Here we are having a "crash" of values. It is jarring and discombobulating and senseless and meaningless at first glance. Here there is no underpinning, no matter how weak, of anything remotely resembling a Judeo-christian value system. This is simply post-communist post-modern chaos.
From where I am sitting, the clash of values elsewhere in the world seems mild in comparison to the crash of values here. And then if you throw in the bible college mentality here on top of the post-communist post-modern its a train wreck! I sat in a faculty meeting yesterday . . . or rather I should say I was dragged to a faculty meeting yesterday (the Seminary here is trying to the woo the CMA to establish a school of Missions and Evangelism, and for some confused reason they thought that me attending the faculty meeting would convince me) . . . and I was horrified. Instead of resolving post-modern post-communist student challenges of the 2006-2007 school year, most of the meeting reminded me of where I did my undergraduate work many many many years ago. I kept expecting Beaver Cleaver to jump out of the closet. It was a 1940-1950's bible college lets make lots of rules atmosphere that in my estimation was a total fantasy/nightmare (depending on your point of view) for today's world.
It got me to thinking about change and culture and influence. All of these older folks on the faculty clearly thought the past was a place we should return to; a desirable place that had value for today. Then I started wondering why I so completely absolutely don't agree with them? Because I am actually pretty conservative deep down inside (somewhere). This created quite a bit of discomfort for me personally, because the older faculty wanting to go backwards were not but a few years older than me. So what is wrong with me? Why am I on such a different wavelength than many of my peers?
Then this morning I discovered the reason I am such a different wavelength than my peers. I don't think there is anything wrong with the current crop of students! I love this generation! When they are on fire for God, they rock! This morning clarified all of that . . . when I was headed to my classroom and one of the students came tearing up the stairs yelling for me to come, a student was terribly sick and they needed me right away. So I ran and we got her out of the bathroom and onto a bed . . . she had been throwing up blood and other things, and everything was a mess . . . and I haven't driven an ambulance in almost 20 years . . . and thankfully soon the local ambulance guys and gals arrived and took the student away to the hospital. And now I can tell you why I am not like my peers . . . because these guys prayed in my class for this student and prayed . . . we stopped no less than four other times in class to pray for this student . . . we cancelled another class, just so that we could pray for this student for the whole hour!! Thats why I have so much hope in this generation . . . they aren't much for rules, but man they are serious about relationships. I love it. Makes me feel like I am 22 all over again :-)
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