One
semester before I would have graduated from BJU, I was
called into the dean's office and told that I was
being denied reenrollment because they did not agree with the
seminary I was planning to attend. They did not want
their label “mixed” with another school's label with which they
did not agree. This was in December 1982 and the
school was Dallas Theological Seminary. By the way, I did
not attend Dallas. Instead, I went to Trinity Evangelical Divinity
School and loved it! While I had good professors at
BJU, the only permissible theology that was allowed to be
taught was dispensationalism, which I believed in whole-heartedly at the
time, even though I could never quite square it with
Scripture. Pity the poor lad who came from a reform
background. Pity the rest of us for not being given
the opportunity to learn what reform theology was.
There are
so many good Christian colleges out there that will challenge
you to think about the Scriptures honestly and with integrity,
that you don't really need to waste four years at
BJU. If you desire to be indoctrinated, and come from
a dispensational background, then you may do fine, rules and
hypocrisy not withstanding. If you want to be stunted in
your spiritual growth and educational pursuits, then by all means,
go to BJU.
But if you want to learn in
an environment that is faithful to orthodox understandings of the
Scripture while also giving you an opportunity to understand other
traditions within historic Christianity, then go somewhere else.
BJU
will hurt you spiritually. It took several years to overcome
the harmful effects of what we affectionately called “Jonestown.” While
I can appreciate what they are attempting to do, they
are going about it in the wrong way. They have
long since lost the founder's vision of what a truly
Christian university can be and have morphed into a separtistic,
high culture, ecclesiastical enclave that caters to independent, dispensational Baptists
to the exclusion of all other Bible-believing Christians.
For
those poor souls who actually buy into the beliefs and
practices of BJU, they will forever be ostracized from normal
Christian living, and lose all ability to influence their culture
for Christ. I find it interesting to note that Bob
Jones IV has escaped from his upbringing, having earned
a Ph.D. from Notre Dame. I couldn't go to Dallas
Theological Seminary but Bob Jones IV could go to Notre
Dame. Fascinating.