After graduation from seminary, I spent an extra year in Ft. Worth. Mainly to be with Kare, but also to spend the time looking for a job in my field. I had gotten my Master's degree to teach Theatre in a Christian college. My ultimate goal was to do it at Anderson College in SC, my alma mater. I had been guaranteed a job by the Academic Dean there, but he left before I graduated, and that job offer was off of the table. I went looking elsewhere.
I should say here that I was one of the few Christian Baptist dramatists in the country. You could count on one hand who they were, and I was one of them. I had an ego as big as all outdoors. I was good. Everyone told me I was good. That is why I wanted to share my goodness with students to make them good, too. Not as good as me, but good. That is the perfectionist in me.
So, I checked around. Colleges were looking for me too. I had built up some kind of reputation. Pat Robertson from the Christian Broadcast Network contacted me. He wanted me to come to Virginia and run his TV network. I didn't know that much about the TV business, so I declined. Then came the colleges and universities. The three major ones were Hannibal-LaGrange in Missouri, Hardin-Simmons in Texas, and Liberty in Virginia. All three had heard of me and wanted me to come teach there. All three were very complimentary of me. All three sent the same questionnaire.
As I have written earlier about honesty, I have always felt that one should be honest when filling out questionnaires. I did on the MMPI in seminary and almost got kicked out. I have on my resume, too. I never went to Harvard or Yale. I never worked for IBM or on Wall Street. My resume is truthful, and I never thought I could live with myself if I lied about my credentials.
So, the questionnaire they sent me had ten questions. I could truthfully answer yes to 9 of them. Most were questions of character and beliefs in Biblical principles. But there was one that I had trouble with, and that was asking about the inerrancy of the Bible. When I was a kid, I learned that there were two chapters of the Bible that were identical: II Kings 19 and Isaiah 37. Look it up. They are almost word for word the same. These two chapters were probably written 200 years apart. Not the same person wrote them. How could this be? I believe that it was a mistake by the scribes who copied the original manuscripts. Perhaps one got up to go to the bathroom; a gust of wind came along and blew the copied manuscript; and when he got back, he had lost his place. So, I could not say honesty that the Bible was totally inerrant. I sent each questionnaire back, and each school thanked me for being honest. Jerry Falwell even wrote me to say he could never figure out about those two passages either. I have often wondered what if I had just sucked it up and answered yes to everything. My life would have been quite different.
No comments:
Post a Comment