Crossing KCU

The Religion Strikes Back

The walls of the dormitory shuddered as the sound of a violent explosion ripped through the stillness of the early morning hours. Being made of concrete, the force of the explosion had carried the sound and shockwave throughout the entire structure, which was three stories tall, and housed some two hundred students.

I had been standing in the doorway of my room on the top floor, talking to my neighbor Aaron, when the sonic reverberation left us speechless, staring wide-eyed at each other. We were an entire story up from the blast on the opposite end of the building, yet the force of it had completely taken us by surprise. This was even more amazing, considering that we knew it was going to go off as we stood there talking and waiting for it to happen. When it did, we didn’t say a word to each other. We were both pretty frightened by the look on the other’s face, so we went quickly into our rooms, shutting the doors as fast as possible without making any noise.

Aaron and I knew that we were pretty much screwed at that point. We hadn’t set the explosion off, but we had definitely had a hand in the motivation behind it, and we knew who had done it, which made us just as likely to get into trouble as anyone. Even so, it was still difficult to contain our laughter at some of the reactions it generated, as guys came pouring out of their rooms from every section of the dorm, having been woken up with no idea what caused the explosion. No one knew, at that point, that it was only a home made firecracker that didn’t even require a flame to be set off. Still, it was so loud that if I had not known what it was, I would have thought someone threw a grenade down one of the halls. One of the guys, I think a freshmen who had been home-schooled throughout his whole life, came running out screaming that we were being fired on by some middle-eastern nation, and that a barrage of more missiles was imminent, soon to be followed by the rapture—he was obviously reading too much of the Left Behind series.

Inevitably, within only a few seconds of the explosion someone pulled the fire alarm and we all began exiting the building. As we stepped outside into the cold night air of early spring I tried my best to blend into the crowd and avoid drawing attention to myself. None the less, it was difficult to hide when Jim the live-in dorm supervisor came out yelling and screaming at all of us. I couldn’t blame him for being upset, seeing as how he lived in the dorm with his wife and three little kids, and it had no doubt scared the hell out of them. Even so, I got a little defensive when he immediately pointed the finger at me.

A few moments later we were directed toward one of the academic buildings to spend the rest of the night waiting while the police came rolling up and started combing through the building with dogs. At that point, having already been accused by someone, I knew the joke was over and it was time to start thinking about what the consequences were going to be.
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About a week later, I woke up in the morning really startled from a dream I had been having. In this dream I was asleep in my dorm room, and awoke to the sound of someone pounding their fist against the door. I remember thinking to myself that the person on the other side of the door was really angry and whatever they wanted, it was a matter of serious importance to them. Annoyed by the disturbance, I jumped up out of bed and opened the door. As I did, I was grabbed by two men and pulled out into the hallway. They slammed me up against the wall and then proceeded to do the same to my roommate. As I took stock of what was going on and looked around me, I could see that everyone on the entire floor was being taken out of their rooms and lined up against the wall. The men doing this were all dressed like Nazis and had guns, so no one was willing to argue with them. As I stood there trying to figure out what was happening, the Nazis started yelling something back and forth to each other which I couldn’t understand because it was in their own language. Then suddenly, one of the men stepped up to a guy on the other side of the hall, put a gun to his face, and pulled the trigger. Before I had too much time to think about it the man turned, walked right up in front of me, put the gun to my forehead, and I woke from the dream to the sound of the gun going off inside of my head. As I got out of bed, for real, I went about my morning routine, mulling this over in my mind. But as often happens with dreams, it faded out of my mind somewhere between the shower and brushing my teeth.

On that particular day it was raining really hard outside. It was one of those early spring rains, so it was slightly warmer outside, and the air was clean. But the rain itself was horrendous. It was beating down with such force, and in such a torrent, that I was pretty drenched after walking only a few yards outside. As I headed out of the dorm for my 8 a.m. class I noticed a friend of mine standing outside at the other end of the dorm. Adrian was a really neat fellow from South Africa. He was actually from England, but his parents had moved to South Africa as missionaries, so he had spent most of his life growing up there. He was one of the most genuine guys I ever met during my early college years. He was an RA, but he was one of those rare kinds who approached his position from a spiritual point of view, and the power that he had been given never corrupted his character.

Adrian was standing outside in his pajamas, at eight o’clock in the morning, in the downpour, because he was enjoying the blessing of rain that God was providing. There he stood, with his arms outstretched on either side, and his faced turned up towards the sky, eyes shut, silently giving thanks to the Lord. This wasn’t a sight that was typical to see at my college; in fact, it was really bizarre, and even though I can appreciate it now, years later, at the time I thought it was pretty strange. Adrian nodded to me as I passed by, and I couldn’t help but feel that there was a genuine sense of joy emanating from him. It was interesting and even humbling to see him standing there and enjoying something that everyone considered to be a nuisance, but like the dream I had awoke from earlier, I put it out of mind and headed off to class.

I can’t really remember that class very well. The main event of the morning was the meeting I was to have after class, over in the executive offices of the university. I was pretty on edge about it, and my nerves had been slowly working themselves up into a frenzy of anticipation—and not the good kind of anticipation. You see, I knew why I was being called into this meeting with the campus administration. The investigation over the explosion in the dorm had been really thorough, and everyone I knew closely had been under pretty intense scrutiny; some had even been threatened so that they would provide information. This meeting today was my turn.

As I walked over to the administration building, I thought back to the night of the explosion about a week earlier, and the scandal it had generated among the student body. The gossip on campus had relayed the obvious: there had been a major disturbance in the guy’s dorm, and someone was going to hang for it, so to speak.

Without going into too much detail as to the specific nature of the device that was used in the prank, I will simply say, that the resulting police investigation concluded with the official statement that the device was not harmful to human beings, and was labeled as a firework used for the purposes of a practical joke. And that’s what it really was; but in the minds of the school’s administrative and executive hive, it was a direct and malicious attack against the very identity of the college. Thus, the witch hunt had ensued, and I was caught out in the open.

In my mind I tried rationalizing the event, because it was already being exaggerated to the point of myth and legend. Was it really that big of a deal? I mean this was the main guys dorm on campus, and when you cram a couple of hundred guys into a dorm, and give them a curfew every night, the resulting cocktail is an atmosphere that promotes, and indeed thrives off of noise and horsing-around; or as the student handbook designated in the following years, “general buffoonery.”

It didn’t seem much different to me in this particular case, aside from the fact that the number of pranks on campus had been escalating for several weeks, and there was a slightly more progressively destructive tone to each of them. I felt that this destructiveness toward college property was indicative of an undercurrent of anger that had been brewing within the student body for some time. Then one night, it just exploded… literally.

Now, all official investigations aside, the incident was indeed simply a homemade, non-flammable firework that had been set off in a trash can. But the resulting bang that came out of the firework was so loud, that I was still smiling about it a week later, even knowing I was in trouble. I mean, there were guys running out of their rooms screaming that we were being bombed by a foreign power, and the police had rushed over and completely sealed off the building with that yellow tape that says “crime scene.” Keep in mind that this was almost two years before 9/11, our country wasn’t at war, and this was a small backwater town in the Appalachian foothills of Kentucky, on a campus of about 400 students, and you’ll perhaps get a sense of how ridiculous the reaction actually was.

While I cannot take full responsibility for this incident, I did play a significant role in terms of inspiring and instructing the individuals who were directly involved. Likewise, as mentioned earlier, this hadn’t been the first prank that semester, and I had been a direct witness to several of them. There was a definite progression to these events which had ultimately culminated with the firework incident. Moreover, the attitude behind these pranks was indeed one of anger, rebelliousness, and general bitterness. So needless to say the school officials were already on edge, and this final prank had pushed them over. My reputation on campus wasn’t that great anyway which made me a usual suspect, and guilty or not, they were set on getting rid of me to set an example and make a statement.

For my own part, I had been upset with the college for some time for many reasons. Most of the grievances many of the other students and I had were sores that had been festering among the campus body for some time. Many of these issues could be boiled down to the fact that the scriptures which we were supposed to be learning about, and more specifically the life, example, and teachings of Jesus Christ, were not being implemented by the administration when it came to making decisions and setting an example for the campus population.

In most cases, the administration was doing the opposite of what Christ taught in nearly every aspect of its leadership functions. For some reason, the administration of the school was bent on the idea that controlling the outward behavior of students was going to make them love God. In fact, I only ever saw it do the opposite, and though there were small handfuls of students here and there who tried in various ways to speak about this problem, no one would listen.

I could no longer ignore the sharp contrasts that I saw between the teachings of Christ and the lives of all these Christians trying to control me and tell me how to live, punishing me for things that had nothing to do with spirituality in any way. It seemed the college had completely divorced what it was expecting us to learn from the environment it was expecting us to live in. We weren’t being taught how to follow Christ and obey God, but how to follow and obey rules created by men in God’s name.

If that was how the Church’s leaders were being trained, then what did that mean for the people they were supposed to be leading? This was where preachers, youth ministers, Sunday school teachers, worship leaders, and missionaries were coming from. But it seemed that no one was really following God, and instead were just consumed with their own plans, their own agendas, their own ministries, and their own success. I saw all kinds of people who knew all kinds of things about God, but they did not know him. For the first time I began making the connection between the confusion and disillusionment with church that I had experienced in the preceding years, with the inability of church leaders to show me in practical ways what it meant to have a relationship with God. It finally began making sense to me that the lack of real Christian leadership I had experienced growing up was directly tied to what those leaders had learned while they were in Christian college. These were real issues that needed to be addressed, but the problem was that none of us knew how to deal with this the right way.

In response to this great sense of being led astray by those who were supposed to be leading us in the right direction I became filled with bitterness and pride. I tried to talk to people about what I thought, but when I wasn’t listened to, and in some cases even told to be quiet, I responded the wrong way. The right way would have been to appeal to the Lord to act and speak, and to be diligent and persistent in prayer on behalf of the school and its leaders. But instead of doing this, my friends and I took matters into our own hands, and allowed our emotions and our pride to drive us into lashing out destructively. We let the pride, cynicism, and bitterness become manifest through our actions and our words, eventually causing us to completely lose sight of that elusive thing which is supposed to be at the heart of everything we do: love.
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As I was walking into the offices to face the administration on this particular morning, deep down, though I was still a long way from being willing to admit it, I knew I deserved whatever punishment I received from them. As I was sitting in the large conference room awaiting my fate, in walked three of my friends, followed by five members of the administration. My friends and I were told immediately by the head dean, that we were being expelled. Then we were each provided with an escort whose job was to make sure we were packed and gone within one hour. Any further time we spent on campus past that hour would warrant us being accused of trespassing, and the police would be called.

I was to find out during the following weeks, that dozens of other students had been called into the offices of the administration and questioned about the incident in the dorm and several of the other pranks that had occurred that semester. Those four of us who were expelled had been the end result of the investigation. Since I had been only marginally involved, and there were about twenty or so guys directly involved who hadn’t been punished, I decided to appeal my expulsion. But even though the student handbook allowed me to be heard by a board of professors and students, I was denied my hearing, and sent home.

That was a dark time for me. The experience of getting kicked out of a Christian school carries with it a lot of baggage, as well as a lot of shame. Most church people (as you might expect) frown on those who are expelled from a religious institution. Not only did it embarrass me, but also my parents. Moreover, I had completely lost all of the money that was spent on that semester of school; and college, especially private college, isn’t cheap. The whole experience also damaged my relationship with many people in my home church who had supported me going to K.C.U. In short, the entire thing was a complete disaster for me. At least it appeared to be a disaster when it first happened.
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God had spoken to me the morning I was kicked out. At the time I had hardly noticed or given any thought to it at all. It was through my friend Adrian from South Africa who I had witnessed praising God while he was being drenched in the pouring rain. He had been thanking God for a blessing that, to me at least, was nothing more than a matter of annoyance. In this, the Lord had been showing me that there was always blessing to be had, even when we experience something that seems otherwise.

I took that with me as I left Kentucky and headed back home to Indiana. In the weeks and months that were to come I began really thinking about what had happened to me back at college from a spiritual point of view. I concluded after awhile that I was being humbled for the pride that had infected my thinking. Even though the entire punishment had been pretty severe and unjust, it was never the less, something which God had designed for me to experience humility in a new way.

And yet again, it was time for me to get away from the community setting, and learn more clearly how to listen to God’s voice, and respond to people and situations prayerfully, with an attitude of compassion and love, even in the face of persecution. It was a time of extreme discipline, and great change in my life spiritually, and even though it was very painful and humiliating at the time, I wouldn’t go back and change it if I could.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” –Romans 8:28