With another semester about to start in about ten days, I am already receiving emails from future students wanting to know everything from what books they will need, various assignments that I will require, and even what my policy on absences is. This morning, while reading through the first of many emails I will receive before next Thursday’s start of classes, I stumbled upon an email that I had not expected nor have I ever had one like this before. Although I cannot identify its sender because of the privacy policy of the community college I work for, I can share the text of the email (I did not alter any of the original text but did replace names†):
I took your class because I heard you believe in the “Jesus thing” from my friends that’s had you’re classes. I am a Christian and it’s hard when so many of my teachers don’t believe in Jesus or act like it’s not all true. They are rude, critical of students that believe, and I’ve been told by Mrs. Libby† that only babies and people with low IQs believe in fairy tales. I’m excited to be in you’re class and am praying for you.
Never before have I ever had a student email tell me that they are taking my class for the reason that I am a Christian. Normally, by the second week of class I will have anywhere from two to three students that will come and ask me why I am so different than other instructors they have had or even inquire why I am more “open” to discussions with students than others. I always find it interesting that Christians, who have an unfair reputation on America’s college campuses as being prudish, uncompromising, and disrespectful of other’s differences are normally the ones that students identify as the most compassionate, student-friendly, or open to discussions with the student. Where humanism compels and demands compliance with its system, true biblical Christianity simply calls out of love, I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live (Deuteronomy 30:19b)
The email this morning also reveals another reason why I continue to teach within the secular university and college system. Too many of our nation’s college and university faculty are very critical of those who are true believers of the Lord Jesus Christ. While working on my undergraduate degree, I had a biology professor tell me that I was too smart to believe in the “fairy tales” of a virgin birth, of a resurrected God-man, and that I would go far if I would just accept that science has all the answers. Still, to this day, when I think about that conversation, I think of the writing of the apostle Paul, For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God (I Corinthians 1:18).
