Concerning My School

The recent controversy at PHC is a subject upon which I have been silent, both here and in public. In private I have discussed it with my parents and roommate, and with a few close friends. I have also had the benefit of my pastor's counsel. I have not chosen to comment because it is the sort of issue that profits very little from much talk, and none from speculation. I have instead listened and thought, and spoken with those whom I believed would point me first to God in the situation. I was not wrong in that belief, and I remain profoundly grateful for their help.

I wish to say, first, that I was not surprised by these events. God is not surprised by sin, and I believe that no one who has an accurate view of man should be surprised by it either. I am, however, intensely grateful for what has happened. I am grateful for these events because they pierce, because they prick, and because they tempt. I am grateful for them because they squeeze our hearts until the blood comes dripping out--and we can see at last what sort of blood it is.

I knew from my freshman year that the school I had chosen contained and displayed a certain amount of arrogance. Had it been pure, it would have ceased from that pristine state the moment I joined it. PHC's arrogance in my freshman year was to me a reflection of my own heart, and I accepted the eventuality of humbling, both for it and for me. I did not then look forward with any sort of eagerness to the humiliation and pain which would come. I have learned a little better, I think, since then.

My personal humbling came first, and though God broke me, it was only the means of setting straight a crooked spine and deformed feet. The weights attached to my bones during the healing process were heavy, but necessary so that the back and limbs might grow straight. I suffered. But which would a man rather have: a straight spine and the ability to walk, for always, or a hunchback and a wheelchair? I did not choose the pain of transformation. I was too much a coward to do so. However, it is such breaking that leaves the Christian afterwards able to say "God never did me a single wrong. He only blessed me beyond my deserts."

This semester I said farewell to professors whom I love and respect. I did so, in some cases, with tears. My heart has ached. My mind has been bewildered and confused. I have bowed my head before these blasts, ashamed for what I see, feeling indeed as though the heart of me is gripped in a great vice. Oh, we have suffered! Our hearts went into the coffin with our beliefs of what PHC was. We must pause until they return to us. Having been tested, having been squeezed, we have been found mightily wanting. Yes, all of us. There are things I could have done, and I did not do them.

But if I have an opinion on the subject, it is this: that I thank God over and over for the troubles we are experiencing. For it reminds me of my father's old instruction, when we were children cleaning up the house on a Saturday morning. He would instruct us to take everything out of the corners, all the unnoticed and quietly piling garbage of our lives, and put it in the middle of the living room floor. The cleanup was never complete until every item that sat so uncomfortably and obviously out of place in the middle of the room had been put away.

In a like manner, our corners have been scraped out by these events. Yes, scraped until a layer of flesh is gone, like the rope burn that I received yesterday. We have lost all sense of comfortableness with ourselves; our sin has been painfully obtruded upon our notice, and we are driven first to confusion, then to discouragement, and finally either to despair or God. How it reminds me of the chronicles of Israel, this scraping! After all, the way of the cross is inescapably truthful. The business of sanctification is many things, but it is never what one would call pleasant. Essential transformation is accomplished in an instant, but it takes years, a lifetime, for that change to work all through the heart and soul and mind of a human being.

I do not believe that PHC is sick unto death. I believe that it is sick unto life. I do not believe that this is a calamity, but rather a kindness. These circumstances are the first proof I have seen that perhaps God really intends to guide our school. For, consider how gently the thing has been done; think with what exquisite timing God has provided Dr. Walker and his uniquely humble vision. Consider that Dr. Farris voluntarily hands over the school, which he loves so much, to this man who can help us heal. Surely that argues much for Dr. Farris! And, while Dr. Walker is not God, he seems to be God's perfect provision for this time and these wounds.

Dr. Walker is not the man to soothe us with drugs until we have forgotten what it was that hurt us. He is a man who will get to the bottom of the cut and clean out its infection. I believe this because I have spoken with him, and with his wife and daughters at some length, and have listened to him speak with as much impartiality as is ever in my power to use. I do not agree with him completely as to doctrine, but I can see beating in his chest the heart of a man who both loves and feares God. That is all I ask.

Is the son not blessed if his father chastizes him? Is the father not loving if he does this for the son? Have not the greatest excellences and pleasures of my life come to me through pain, and have I not counted it light and momentary in retrospect? What was the pain of learning to love, compared with the joy of loving? What was the pain of learning to hold my tongue, compared with the sweetness of hearing a friend say "you have been God's gift to me, because you listened instead of airing your own opinions"? I could go on and on, and that is why I say, "What is the pain of lost professors, an academic civil war, a deep rupture of trust, and the lost dream (lost now, false and chimerical always) of a pristine PHC, compared with the greatness of being able to see those sins that have been feeding on us in secret all these years? What is comfortable darkness compared with painful light? Comparison! The real question is why we are asked to pay so light a price for such rewards!

And the answer to that question is, besides being the greatest mystery of this or any other universe, quite simple. We pay so light and transitory a price because someone else is making up the balance. And the color of his blood is a rich red, able to stain and transform the watery or yellowish or black-bilious stuff that runs in our veins.

Do not ask why all this has befallen PHC, I beg. Ask rather why any people should be so fortunate as to receive the dear and interested correction of God himself. We have not deserved what has happened. We have not deserved it at all.