The Life and Times of the Laid Low

When I entered the hallowed hall of BICS I was far too eager to express my opinion on every point of contention.  I was ready to do Garry Friesen a favor and diagnose for him the nature of his spiritual cancer.  I floated effortlessly above the dim-witted debaters of Calvinism vs. Arminianism and, with a golden tongue, paved for everyone the high and middle way forward.  Of course, my crowning achievement and the surest evidence of my prodigious genius was the blueprint for denominational and worldwide revival that I first articulated during my three minute chapel presentation.  The days of wine and roses!  But I soon found that the motherly admonition in the Johnny Cash song was true - when one takes his gun to town he'll likely find for himself a fight.  And fight I did - rarely winning and always losing.  A little contentiousness is permissible I suppose - kind of like lion cubs tussling and tumbling in a training exercise for survival.  It was good to match wits if only to prove I had none and better get busy studying to find some.  But I find it interesting - I've never argued much after BICS.  Humility is hard to come by today with a world that's bent on building me up.  We can all praise the Lord for the doctors in Lenox willing to administer a daily dose of "get over yourself"!  

Declaration of Dependence

Individuality is most important when one's goals are personal.  After all - the world has made it clear that true genius can know no collaboration and that authentic greatness means never sitting on another's shoulders.  The lionization of Steve Jobs would not be complete without the autopsies of a thousand dead friendships, right?  Each class of students that comes here to Lenox exhibits the awful symptoms of this cultural contagion.  We all came to BICS a little i am and were made to look up and consider the Great I AM.  We certainly didn't all get it right away - making silly where serious would have profited far more, flirting when courting would have been more productive, and talking when listening would have kept us from being discovered for the fools that we were.  But, for most of us, we eventually decided to spend our lives and devote our energies on goals that can only be met as a group.  We were taught what it means to be in the family of God and we took our places up front and behind; but always alongside.