President's Dinner

I went to the President’s Dinner the other night. My wife is a Resident Director with the University, and as a result, we were invited to join Dr. Bowling and his wife for an intimate evening among 800 other staff and faculty members. I felt a little underdressed in my button up shirt and kahki pants. However, I didn’t care too much. I am always intrigued by these kinds of events. It was somewhat reminiscent of a homecoming. Everyone sees each other after going through a period of not seeing each other, and it’s really quite nice. The thing that gets me though is the amount of pride that Chalfant hall seemed pregnant with that evening. Which is all well and good (it was quite humorous to hear everyone bellow our boring Alma Mater). There is nothing wrong with feeling a sense of honor towards one’s university. We see it every weekend of college sports, every homecoming, and apparently at President dinners too. But something seemed a little off. Let me explain.

Olivet has a number of singing groups. One in particular is the “Olivetians.” They are the premiere group that seems hand picked as the best singers and representative “models” of the Olivet community. They are the ones sent to churches and doing PR and stuff. They don’t ever seem to sing songs that college students actually enjoy, but older Nazarenes love them. At any rate, they closed with a song about God’s holiness, exalting his name. Adoration and praise is something that we ought to give God. He is truly the only One worthy of the name Lord, and the only One who is holy. So they sing these verses and lead into the chorus singing, “So I only want to tell you I love You.” It’s got a catchy tune and the orchestral arrangement was done so that it would grip the heart of the audience (you know, the booming bass line during certain words, the key change: it was written musically to invoke passion). And I could only sit there and think to myself, “We’re only telling God I love you? Does God really want us to sit here and tell him that, or go and show him that we love him?” I remembered Jesus talking to Peter and asking Peter that question: Do you love me. And Peter says of course, and Jesus responds “Then feed my sheep.” The scripture continues with several like phrases of showing compassion as the way in which we show love. Basically, loving God is not telling God we love him; it’s loving our neighbor.

I was explaining this to my wife on a walk the other night. I happened to be talking about the contradictory statements that I had noticed in the speech that evening. It was the normal stuff that I always seem to notice. The fact that Olivet is said to be missional and a model for the disciple of Jesus while building a 22 million dollar chapel strikes me as a bit odd, especially considering Jesus’ words throughout the gospels. Joy then told me that she doesn’t think I will ever be able to commit to any institution because they are not, in my eyes, “perfect.” She continued that it was as if I had a pre-conceived notion of what things ought to be like, and if it wasn’t that, I could only sit there and criticize.

I have struggled with this concept before. I believe that the Kingdom of God is here and yet to come. It is here in the sense that Jesus has made it readily available for us to be a part of, live, breathe, and act upon. Jesus, as a proclaimer of this message, not only taught it, but fully embodied it and passed it on to his Church to proclaim and embody: to live out. This Kingdom is the reality that the church lives by: to seek justice, proclaim mercy, and walk humbly with God. Unfortunately, we also live with the tension of our humanness. Occasionally (or quite often), this nature has a way of weeding itself into the realm of Kingdom living. Sometimes it’s quite obvious (history can point to the Crusades, the Inquisition, or colonialization: which all seem to have their root in the compromise of religion with the state). However, more often than not it creeps up unbeknownst to most: selfishness, pride, indignation, resentment, poor stewardship. It’s so sneaky sometimes that we hardly even notice that certain elements (certainly not all) are masquerading as Kingdom elements.

My wife might be right to a certain extent. I do pick out and criticize the institution for their flaws. This goes for the church, university, or even small group bible studies. To her, I see the flaw instead of the diamond. And, it’s a completely legitimate concern. I guess that she sees me longing for perfection when perfection so easily evades. However, I do not think that I am so far off. I may criticize (perhaps a little too often), but my criticism is out of a love for the Church as the primary mode that God has chosen to do his work. While the University is not a church, by claiming Christianity it is inherently a part of its work, and therefore God’s Kingdom.

I was a little hurt by Joy’s comments on that walk. I wasn’t hurt necessarily by what she said, nor by her speaking her mind, but rather of the small glimpse that we still have a lot to learn of each other. I am committed to the church. I am a harsh critic, but I still long to be part of a community that together seeks and proclaims God’s Kingdom, here and to come. These were the very issues that I wrestled with when seeking ordination. I finally realized that while the church has its faults, it is still God’s church, and I am God’s.

So, now I need to practice all the stuff I talk about: justice, mercy, and humility. So I embark on that journey with millions of others who are also trying to live a different kind of life.