Crossing KCU

Rules, Regulations, and Rebelling the Right Way

I need to back up just a little bit in order to tell the full tale of my time as a resident assistant on the campus of K.C.U. This is the one part of the story that doesn’t fit neatly into a chronological mold I guess.

It really began back during the semester I was working in the cafeteria, when I wasn’t enrolled in classes. The campus administrators had become quite impressed it seemed with my willingness to serve in any capacity, and since I was getting to be older than the other students, and because I had been familiar with the campus at this point for almost five years, they decided to approach me about working there as an RA. I never imagined that this would happen. But I went through the application process as a formality, and they gave me the job.

My first semester as an RA was in the fall of 2002, and my first day of work was the day that I had met Jeffery—all dressed in his slacks, long-sleeved shirt, and sweater. That August I arrived on campus a week earlier than the other students for the RA training and orientation week. Within an hour of my arrival I was required to attend the first meeting of that week, and as I did I quickly began to get a sense that I was coming into this job with a really blind perception of what it actually meant to be a resident assistant on this Christian campus. All I had ever known about RAs from the past several years had taught me to avoid them, and that they were students who could not be trusted. In earlier years it was not uncommon for me to get into arguments with them. Their job was ridiculous from my perspective. They were paid to inform on their fellow students and get them into trouble for not following rules.

The training week was the time set aside for the administration to make us into their own little campus police force. We were told by our leaders in the student life office that we were the best of the best, the chosen few, and the ambassadors of Christ for the rest of the student body. We were fed a lot of information during that week, and slowly walked through the procedures for everything from fire drills, to curfew violations, to counseling other students. One of the greatest concerns of the administration and student life office who were training us that week was to impress upon us the importance of upholding the rules and regulations for the campus community.

However, underlying all the discussions that week were constant reminders that we had, above all else, a commitment to Christ to honor the positions we were being given as leaders over the other students. While most of the students seemed to take in the information and instructions we were receiving with relative ease, and while I nodded my head and kept quiet during all the meetings, there were some major questions rising to the forefront of my thoughts.

I suppose, somewhere deep inside of me, I knew this was going to happen. I knew going into this that I was, at some point, bound to have a few disagreements with my supervisors. I suspected all along that those who had hired me to be an RA had done so with the idea that I would make a good disciplinarian. After all, I am a big guy, and sometimes I tend to intimidate other people without really meaning to at all. This, along with the fact that they had put me in charge of the specific section of the guy’s dorm that was notorious for causing trouble, increased my suspicion that they had selected me with the notion that I would make people behave according to the campus expectations.

To be honest, there was enough pressure being put on me during that first week that I would have probably ended up doing exactly what they expected me to do. The only thing that saved me from this course of action was the time I spent alone in prayer each night while I was in my section of the dorm. My prayers were simple, and they mostly consisted of asking God to show me what it meant to really lead other people, and asking him to speak to me about how he wanted me to do this job that I had been assigned. I had learned before that it’s best to go to God and ask him his opinion about something, regardless of what others might be saying, and then to take some time to really listen to what he says.

During this time, I was reminded of some specific passages in scripture that directly applied to the situation I was in, and which I had forgotten about. Specifically, this passage in the Gospel of Mark:

“Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.’” –Mark 10:42-44

It didn’t take me very long to realize that I had two choices about how to proceed in this position of leadership. In simple terms, I could do what the school officials told me to do, which was to enforce rules and regulations and maintain discipline through exercising my authority and asserting my position as leader over the other guys, or I could forget that I was even an RA at all, look at myself as just another brother, living with other brothers, and discard any notion that I was above these guys, and instead endeavor to serve them in whatever capacity I was able. I knew these were my choices, and that there was no middle ground. I also knew that if I were to truly apply Christ’s teachings to my job as an RA, it might mean that I would be quickly fired for not doing what I was told to do. So I asked for God to really confirm for me that this was his will, and that he was really speaking to me. I didn’t want to go against the administration that was employing me, unless I was absolutely sure that God wanted me to do so.

Well, the first morning of the semester came, and found me in a situation that was a little embarrassing at the time. All of the RAs were given shirts to wear bearing the school’s logo, and the phrase “Student Life Staff.” We were to wear these shirts while moving in the new freshmen, and seeing them through their orientation. Now, as I’ve already made quite clear, I’m a big dude, and as such my shirt size isn’t exactly standard. Because my supervisor who was in charge of ordering the shirts waited until the night before to get them, there wasn’t enough time to order the size that I needed. So the bottom line was that I was the only RA, out of about thirty others, who didn’t have a shirt to wear. Initially I was pretty embarrassed by this fact, and I was a little upset, but there was nothing I could do about it. So on that first morning of welcome weekend, I just put on a plain white shirt and went out to get my picture taken with the other RAs, and to begin moving the new freshmen into the dorms.

During that day I realized something. The only difference between the white shirt I was wearing, and the white shirt the others had on, was that their shirt had the school logo and said “Student Life Staff,” and mine was just a blank shirt with nothing on it. I realized as I was making my way through that day, that this accurately reflected who we were working for. I wasn’t really working for the school anyway—I was working for God. I knew from that day forward that it was God who I had to obey, regardless of whatever the consequences might be.

In accordance with this I made a few decisions about my job as RA that were heavy upon my heart, and which I knew God was leading me to make. The first decision I made, was that I would endeavor not to enforce any of the university’s rules. I would abide by the rules and regulations myself, except where I felt a conflict between obeying them and obeying God, but I would never try to make someone else do the same. I felt this was very important in keeping with Christ’s command that it is not our job to be lords, or exercise authority over our brothers. Instead, I did what I could to just be an example for the guys I was living with—not by being a religious zealot who lived according to a pattern of rules and regulations, but by being a servant who put love above everything else when considering how to interact with those I was living with.

The second decision I made was to spend as much of my free time in the dorm as possible, so that I could be available to the other guys who were there if they needed anything. This wasn’t a difficult decision to make considering that I had no vehicle on campus at the time. Along with this, I always left my door cracked to indicate that I was available, and I made time for anyone who came to my room regardless of who they were, what they were there for, or what work I needed to get done. I put everything else on hold when someone came to spend time in my room.

The third thing I did was to use a large portion of the money I received for being an RA as funds to keep food and drinks stocked in my room to share with others whenever they were hungry or thirsty. I knew from past experience that when curfew rolled around it was typical for guys to go around looking for food, so I made sure to have some available for anyone who came to my room in their search for sustenance.

In these small ways I was able to communicate to the guys living around me that I did not view myself as an authority over them, but instead as a brother who was willing to serve them by making time for them, providing for them, and listening to them. I was able to get across to them, without even using words, that I was just one of them, despite the fact that I had been given a man-made title which said otherwise. Because of these things they trusted me, and I was able to impact their lives not by glorifying the school, and its man-made rules and regulations built on tradition, but by glorifying Christ through emulating his example which came directly out of the New Testament.

After a couple of months of this, things were going so smoothly that I had made friends with nearly everyone in our section, and from there we were able to build relationships with each other that were meaningful, and spiritually beneficial to all of us living in that section. I contrasted what was happening in my section with what I saw going on in most other parts of the dorm, where the RA of any particular section would isolate himself in his room, and only interact with the guys around him as part of his weekly duties; which often included making sure rooms were clean, and no one was too loud during curfew. The guys who lived in the most strictly run sections were so alienated from their RA that they simply wanted nothing to do with him. As a result, guys from other sections began drifting down to my room, and I began making new friends from all over the dorm.

Each week when all the resident assistants would have meetings with the Student Life Director, Men’s and Women’s Housing Directors, and the Dean of Student Services, we were given the same speech. This speech basically emphasized the lack of demerits that were being written (demerits were little pieces of paper that RAs and administrators would hand out to students if they were caught breaking a rule). They told us how we needed to do a better job enforcing the rules of the campus and making the students comply. I would always sit in the back, and quietly contemplate the possibility that this was the week where I would be called in and fired for not doing my job. But week after week, nothing happened. Everyone just left me alone, and it was almost as if I had been completely overlooked by the administration.

It left me sad as the months went by that year, to see the other RAs struggling to fulfill the expectations of the administration, who never seemed to be satisfied with the number of demerits being written, or the number of fines being leveled against the student body. And all the while they were destroying any real opportunity they had to truly connect with their fellow peers.

As the year wore on, it became more and more clear to me that the best way to lead others (perhaps the only real way) was to just follow Christ’s example. After all, didn’t we believe that Christ was the greatest leader who ever walked this earth? And didn’t it make even more sense to do it his way because we were attending a Christian university whose stated mission was to train leaders to be like Christ?
_______

The whole situation reminded me of one of my favorite movies: The Karate Kid. I really like that movie, because it does a good job of showing visually the difference between the two kinds of leadership that I was encountering during that time. Even though I relate this to my experience as an RA at college, the kinds of leadership portrayed in The Karate Kid can be applied to almost any situation. On one side of the equation you have an evil sensei martial arts master who dominates his group of twenty or so students by making sure they are afraid of him. He threatens them, yells at them, and teaches them through a very systematic, impersonal method of control style leadership. He makes sure that they know he’s the boss, and he punishes them anytime they make the slightest step out of line. As a result, the young men he instructs lack any true sense of discipline or moral grounding, and instead they are obsessed with dominating others through force, just as their master dominates them. This is a pretty good representation of the type of leadership used and promoted among the leaders of K.C.U., who were employing me to do the same thing. This is how they ruled over the student body, and this is how they expected us to do the same as their resident assistants.

But in The Karate Kid, there is another way of leading others that is directly opposite to the idea of control and rule enforcement. We see Mr. Miagi, the gentle repairman from Okinawa who enjoys gardening, fishing, and old cars. He’s a simple man, but underneath his calm exterior, he is portrayed as an unstoppable fighting machine. Yet his humility is so genuine, and so thoroughly integrated into his character, that fighting would only ever be used as a last resort to protect and defend. He has one student who he befriends, and through his personal relationship with this kid, he begins sharing his knowledge and teaching karate. His way of teaching his student is so subtle that it often appears as if he’s not teaching him karate at all. Most of what Mr. Miagi shares with his student (Daniel) occurs naturally through the example that he sets for him.

My favorite illustration from this movie can be seen in the climax of the film. In the last scene Daniel faces off against Johnny, the top student of the evil sensei, in the final match of a tournament that will decide once and for all who has learned their skill the best, and more importantly, who has the better master. As the referee gives the go ahead, Daniel employs a single, odd looking kick, that flattens his opponent to the mat, and wins him the championship. But the most interesting thing about this particular kick, is that it involves the mastery of a technique on which Mr. Miagi never verbally instructs him. Much earlier in the film, we watch as Daniel emerges from a swim in the ocean and notices his master way down the beach, practicing this same technique. As the film progress we catch brief glimpses of Daniel attempting to execute this kick while Mr. Miagi isn’t around, and failing in each attempt. Yet ultimately, through nothing more than simple imitation of his master and a great deal of perseverance, Daniel learns the kick that wins him the karate tournament.

I love that illustration because it is so similar to the way that Christ teaches those of us who are his students. He gives us an example in the scriptures. And just as he allowed his disciples the opportunity of following him around from place to place, and watching him teach and serve and love people, so too he invites us to learn from him in the same way, by doing some of the same things that he did. It’s amazing. Moreover, that’s what true leadership is in this world. The most that any of us who are placed in leadership positions can do is to point people in the direction of the true leader by learning to be more like him, and serving others as he did.
_______

This is what Christ began teaching me as I listened to him and just followed his example from scripture. I knew that I could get fired at any time during that first year as an RA for not doing my job, and refusing to enforce any of the rules, but I never did, because God honored my commitment to him. And by the end of that year, I knew beyond any doubt that if I had adopted from the beginning the things I was told to do as an RA in the area of rule enforcement, I would have never had the opportunities to do the other things which really mattered; like getting involved in peoples’ lives and showing them in action what it means to be a follower of Christ. After all, who wants to listen to a person who is just telling you what to do all the time, and trying to control your life? Satan is the one who tries to control us, but Christ never does this—he leads us.

Jesus never keeps his distance from us, and he never expects us to follow a list of rules and regulations in order to be in a relationship with him. The fact that the church is referred to as the ‘bride’ of Christ gives us further revelation into this idea. In a marriage relationship, the two people in the relationship relate to one another out of love… out of a deep attachment or bond that exists in a spiritual, mental, and physical form. While there are rules in a marriage, obedience to them is not what makes the two people love each other… rather it is their love for each other which brings about obedience to the rules. This makes me question where we, as the Church, ever got the idea that making other people follow rules will somehow make them love God.

“Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: ‘Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!’ These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.” –Colossians 2:20-23