Chapter 16. College Women

Fall is the most romantic season in east Tennessee. The quality of light, the red and gold trees, the magic of leaves to kick through on sidewalks, the crisp, intoxicating air. And here at Southern there were no rules against holding hands.
At Highland, any physical contact with girls was frowned on. Early in my senior year, a college girl from SMC I had met at summer camp came to visit for a weekend. We sat together at Friday night vespers. The school sent a letter to my parents. My mom didn’t mention it until a few weeks later. She thought it was funny–that the school would get bent out of shape because a guy and a girl were sitting together in a church service.

But now I was in college. Nobody cared if I sat with a girl or held her hand!

On Sunday afternoon, a couple of weeks after school started, a girl invited me to go with her and a group of her friends for a walk in the fields on the far side of the valley. After we had walked awhile, she took my hand. Her touch sent electricity through my whole body.

The trail ran past a scattering of huge boulders. We clambered up and sat, talking. We laid back on the warm rocks, looking at the sky. She messed with my hair.

I kept thinking, so this is what people do in college! This is what I’ve read about–casual, wonderful times with women. I knew this girl and I were not headed for serious romance, but I luxuriated in the intoxicating pleasure of being together, touching and talking. I savored the fire of attraction and the sweetness of her softness and yieldedness. I felt more a part of the world than ever before in my life. These students, the whole lot of them, welcomed my presence. This sophomore girl–this dark-haired, laughing extrovert–liked me, touched me, snuggled against me. If only the day could last forever.

There were girls everywhere. In classes, in the cafeteria, at church, on mission activities, at work. I liked them all.



Late in the fall, after the leaves were off the trees, the school planned a day of Ingathering. We met in the gym to organize. Faculty members were available to drive their cars. Upper classmen also drove.

Each car load of four to six students was given a map of their territory. It was explained this was not just about raising money for disaster relief and the poor people in Africa, it was a chance for us to represent the face of Jesus to people we would meet. It might be that someone we would talk today would be in some kind of personal crisis and our kindness, our knock on their door, our offer to pray with them might make the difference between life and death.

The student leaders role played a few encounters at the door.

“Hi. I’m Jeff and this is Marcie. We’re from Southern Missionary College and we’re out today collecting donations for the victims of tornadoes and hurricanes here in the United States and to help poor people in Africa who don’t have enough to eat.

“Your donation will make a real difference in the life of another human being.

“Here’s a pamphlet that explains more about the way these funds are used.”

Jeff stepped out of character for a minute to explain, “Hand them the pamphlet. If they take it and begin to look at it, this is a good sign. While they are looking, remind them of the tornado in Middleborough last year.”

Jeff stepped back into character with Marcie.

“You remember that terrible tornado in Middleborough last year? Well, funds from this program helped to provide clothing and emergency supplies for the people whose houses were destroyed by that tornado.”

“And our disaster relief helped with the aftermath of the flood up in eastern Kentucky just this past spring. Anything you can do to help with this life-saving work will be greatly appreciated.”


I joined four other students in Dr. Crowly’s car. Victoria sat in the middle in the front. I had the window seat. The weather was miserable, gray and rainy. Our assigned territory was an hour’s drive north. I might have found the long, dreary drive boring, but Victoria was making her happiness at having me beside her rather obvious. She scooched herself as tightly against me as she could. I was not repelled by her warmth.

After the usual small talk of everyone finding out where everyone else was from and what their parents did professionally and how many brothers and sisters they had, I asked the professor one of my favorite questions.

“We preach that Jesus is coming soon. Just this last Friday night, the vespers speaker’s entire sermon was focused on ‘the last generation.’ If we do our job of taking the gospel to the whole world, we could see Jesus come before we have grandchildren–for most of us before we have children. We don’t have to keep living in a world of hunger, disease and injustice. The second coming is just around the corner.

“But, when I look at Southern Missionary College or Highland Academy or our church back home, these don’t look like places that were built by people who expected to be gone in a five or ten years. These places were built to last.

“How can we say we really believe Jesus is coming soon and still pour so much money into buildings? Why don’t we put all our money in preaching the gospel? And why do we coop young people up out here in the country and try to educate them instead of sending them out to evangelize the world?”

Dr. Crowly had heard this question before. He was ready. “Ellen White says we are to live our lives as though Jesus were coming tomorrow. But we are to plan as though he were not coming for another twenty years. Yes, we believe Jesus is coming soon. It could be in less than five or ten years. But even the Bible warns, ‘no man knows the day or the hour.’

“So since we don’t the exact time of Jesus’ coming, it seems like a smart thing to build quality buildings.”

“Yea, but do we really need expensive white pillars on the front of the Ad Building? Do we need a fifty-thousand dollar pipe organ in the church? Does the two million dollar gymnasium they are building really help prepare us to finish the work? What is the purpose of a physical education major? How does that help us get the world ready for the return of Jesus?”

“You should have been here when I first arrived on campus twenty-seven years ago. There was only one brick building on campus. That was the science building. (Now it’s the theology building.) Everything else was wood and cheap. The girls’ dorm was a fire trap. The guys’ dorm smelled bad and looked like a strong wind would blow it over. The floors on the second floor of the Ad Building felt saggy under your feet when you walked the hall. You couldn’t help but wonder if some day someone was going to fall through into an office below.

“When they built those buildings seventy-five years ago, they built them cheap. They figured why waste money on expensive buildings when Jesus was going to come before very long and everything would be burned up. They took seriously the idea that we were a missionary college. We were preparing students to go and take the Third Angels Message to the whole world in their generation. They figured we didn’t have much of a future here in this world, so they didn’t plan for it. They planned for a future in heaven. But here we are.

“So I think investing in representative buildings is a good idea. It lends dignity to the Adventist cause. It helps people recognize we are not just some fly-by-night sect. I think it even helps a lot of our students. It helps them take their church more seriously. They see that we are serious about putting our very best into God’s service.”

I had been through this argument before with preachers and teachers and my parents. I sympathized with their advocacy of quality, dignity and excellence in architecture, education and professional development. I had no respect for students who wanted easy tests and minimal course requirements. I had no respect for teachers who didn’t stretch students with their demands. I didn’t want to be part of a church that nodded approval toward lazy scholarship and mediocre art.

I hadn’t yet connected excellence in art with elegance in architecture. My dad always insisted we could have chosen to live in a fancier house, but we didn’t because living in a cheaper house freed up money for missions. It seemed to me that a college specializing in preparing young people to engage in selfless service for Jesus should make some kind of statement about its commitment to self-denial in the buildings it erected. Besides, this was 1970. I was not the only young person questioning the patterns of consumption of previous generations.

But no matter how much I thought about the question. No matter how many times adults quoted our prophet’s exhortation to plan for a long future while expecting Jesus to come very soon, I could never bring myself to accept the reasoning. How can a person genuinely believe Jesus is coming soon–say in five or ten years–and at the same time make investments that only make sense from the perspective of a forty- or fifty-year future? Either you believe the end is near or you don’t. How you behave reveals what you believe.

There was no point in pushing the debate. Dr. Crowley was a long-time Adventist. Every Adventist knew Jesus was coming soon. That’s what made us Adventists (people who anticipated the imminent Advent). There was no way he could bring himself to say he didn’t believe the end was near. He had spent perhaps fifty years living in a community that repeatedly asserted in the strongest terms that the end of the world was upon us. Just a few more years and we would be plunged into the time of trouble. The Mark of the Beast would be imposed on everyone except a handful of faithful followers of Jesus. The seven last plagues would fall.

Dr. Crowley had lived so long with the contradiction between this theory about the end of time and the actual shape of our life as a religious community that he no longer felt the tension. The religious part of his brain believed the end was near. But he lived like a typical educated Adventist. He had gotten his Ph. D. in support of his career in education, built equity in a house he owned, anticipated retirement. And he expected the college to act with similar good sense in planning its future.

My own place in this struggle between end time zeal and “regular time” realism varied erratically. Sometimes I thought I should drop out of school and give everything I had to spreading the gospel to the world. Then I dreamed of getting an M. D./Ph. D. Solving problems in blood chemistry associated with prolonged work in deep water environments.

Obviously, if Jesus were coming back in five years, it would be a total waste of time to chase a Ph. D. in biochemistry. I couldn’t possibly finish in less than eight years. On the other hand, while I admired the students who talked about dropping out of school to spread the gospel NOW, I could never fully identify with them. Most were newly converted hippies and druggies. They weren’t into history or sciences. I loved their bohemian attitudes and was perplexed by their naivete.

Our conversation turned to less contentious topics. While the prof and I talked, Victoria snuggled against me, occasionally resting her head on my shoulder. Once we reached our territory, we climbed in and out of the car to solicit at small stores or clusters of houses.

We didn’t take in much money. The people seemed as morose and sullen as the weather. Often, they appeared to need the money as badly as the people pictured in the Ingathering brochure.

Finally, around four thirty we headed back toward the college. As the day got darker, Victoria got cozier. She pulled my arm into her lap and gently stroked it up and down. She played her long fingernails over the skin of my hand.

I glanced over at Dr. Crowley to see if he was taking any notice. At Highland Academy this kind of PDA (public display of affection) would have been forbidden. But he seemed oblivious.

The people in the back seat were engrossed in their own conversation. So I tried to multi-task, holding up my end of the conversation with Dr. Crowley while paying attention to the thrill of Victoria’s touch.