Chapter 30 The Positive Way

Back at Southern, I enrolled in the usual classes for a religion major: Greek, more church history, Spanish II, Life and Teachings of Jesus, accounting. Accounting was the hardest class I ever took in school. Period. The concepts were not difficult, but copying or transferring numbers accurately between columns and adding or subtracting accurately was utterly beyond me. This difficulty with precision had always been a challenge but in science labs I could compensate for my clumsiness in manipulating devices, numbers, and materials by demonstrating comprehension of the underlying concepts. In accounting, the only way to demonstrate comprehension was to accurately copy and add numbers. Not possible. (I never balanced my check book until I had the services of Excel.)
Church history was exhilarating. The prof was a newly minted Ph. D. determined to stuff us with information. His tests were ridiculously broad. If I remember right, one of the questions on the final was something like: Write the history of the Christian Church from 500 to 1200 A.D. His lectures, the assigned reading and the class discussions brought the story of the church alive. The people, the theological disputes, the cycles of institutional formation, decline and reform all were surprisingly familiar. They offered a revealing mirror in which to inspect our world, the Adventist world, which I had always understood to be a unique endtime movement with unique problems and unique duties.

One of the “new things” on campus was a thirteen-week course in prayer called “The Positive Way.” It wasn't part of the formal curriculum, but it was spearheaded by a popular religion professor, Ed Zackrison and endorsed by most of the student spiritual leaders. By the time I got back from my adventures in New York and the Middle East, it had become the most visible expression of corporate zeal and piety.
My friend, Bill Shelly, urged me to enroll. Still, I was reluctant. It sounded too formulaic, a little too magical. But how could I sit out a program that promised to bring people to a whole new level of engagement with God? So I enrolled.
The class sessions included both teaching about the theory of prayer and testimonies from participants about their experiences in prayer during the previous week. We were assigned readings on prayer and specific prayer practices. Each participant was partnered with a sponsor, someone who had previously completed the class. You met with your sponsor once a week in addition to attending the group meeting.
The class content offered repeated, strong affirmations of God's affectionate regard for all us. Salvation was not difficult. God was not hard to please. As evidence of this God gave us many promises which we could claim in prayer with full expectation that he would give us what we asked.
In group sessions, students told stories of facing daunting examinations, certain they would fail. In prayer, they claimed the promise in James, “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God who giveth liberally and upbraideth not.” Sure enough, they aced the test.
Relationship troubles, money troubles, sickness—all responded to the mighty power of prayer. Every group session featured accounts of amazing divine intervention in the lives of the class participants. I didn't have any stories to share. I wondered what made the difference.
My sponsor was someone I had gone to school with for a couple years back in grade school. He was a nice guy who didn't know much about the Bible. A serious interest in religion and spiritual life was fairly new to him. For each of our weekly sessions, he had a list of questions he was supposed to ask me. He asked them. I answered. It felt awkward. I had all sorts of questions about prayer I would have liked to explore, but I had no interest in dampening his enthusiasm. So we kept our appointments, while the whole thing felt increasingly unreal.

My own piety was no less intense for all this failure to experience tangible answers to prayer. I still prayed and read my Bible every morning, chasing a sense of intimacy with God, hoping for a sense of divine approval. I was outspoken in classroom and after-class debates. I vigorously advocated the primacy of grace. I seconded Venden's arguments that we are saved by relationship not by behavior. I read the mystics Johann Tauler, Meister Eckhart, Nicolas of Cusa and was both enthralled and tormented by their writing. I desperately wanted to experience for myself the kind of intimacy with God they described.
But peace and tranquility never came. At least not for more than a few minutes at a time.
I remember one Friday night coming back to the room from the evening meeting. I knelt by my bed and prayed silently. (Bill was asleep in the top bunk.) My praying was an inarticulate, desperate longing for God's affirmation. After a long time of futile praying I lay on the floor, still wearing my tie and tweed jacket, exhausted but too agitated with unfulfilled spiritual longing to go to bed. Going to bed would have been an admission that I was okay, that life could go on. But I was not okay. Life in the condition I was in was not acceptable. I was frustrated with God. But that was not allowed, so I was frustrated with myself. Eventually I fell asleep on the floor where I remained for the night.
That night was not particularly dramatic. The room was reasonably warm. I felt asleep on a carpet not on a bed of nails. But it epitomized the experiential vacuum hiding behind my voluble theologizing. I had opinions, strong opinions. I loved to preach. I led small groups. I found keen satisfaction in talking with others who struggled with spiritual alienation and confusion. Occasionally, I could see people relax as we talked. Somehow my words were helpful to them. But I was a pipe unwet by the water I carried,

I began again to question my call to the ministry. I was doing well in my classes. I enjoyed theology and philosophy. Greek was interesting. I took an American Lit class that focused especially on Emmerson, Thoreau and Hawthorne. All of them evinced a strong ethical vision. Thoreau's and Emmerson's vague pantheism was alluring. It was a view of God that invited wonder and contemplation and made theological disputation appear petty and maybe even irrelevant.
I was increasingly put off by the culture of the theological student community. We argued about everything. The meaning of this or that particular passage. The proper emphasis to be given to a particular point of doctrine in the overall life of the church. We debated the best methods of leading churches, about the proper role of paid clergy versus empowering the laity, the proper interpretive role of Ellen White in biblical studies.
There was no method for ending the arguments. If I appealed to Luther, my sparring partner could appeal to Carlstadt. If I cited Calvin, he could reference Armenius. Councils contradicted each other, and Adventists denied their authority, anyway, even if they had agreed. Every position could be defended by at least one quotation from Ellen White. Selected Messages would be pitted against The Great Controversy. What the prophet had written in Early Writings would be quoted against something she had written in a newly-discovered letter. And since everything she wrote was inspired, it was all authoritative even when contradictory. Church history could never resolve the debates. It merely proved that both positions in all arguments had been voiced by someone before.
When I hung out with my friends who were science students, which wasn't often, it seemed they were comfortable with each other and the world. They were part of an optimistic common quest for information and mastery. In contrast to the theology students who were training for an uphill battle against all-pervasive evil, science students were training for participation in a successful humanitarian enterprise. Science was making progress and expected to continue to do so. Theology was rooted in a profound pessimism. Things were bad and getting worse. The job of pastors and evangelists was to save a few people out of the doomed world. In retrospect, no wonder the scientists were more at ease.
In theology classes, it was common for students to complain bitterly—out loud, in front of the entire class—about how hard the material was, about how excessive the reading requirements were. Frequently, before a test, someone would raise his hand and ask what was going to be on the test. They would ask which of the assigned readings they would be tested on. They were whiners. Not all of them, of course. But enough, that it made me embarrassed to be part of the group. For too many of them, academic mastery was seen as utterly irrelevant to the real work of God. They saw the work of the ministry as entirely spiritual—meaning subjective and intuitive, guided by their solipsistic reading of the Bible. The details of academic theology, Greek grammar, exegesis, and philosophy were regarded by these “spiritualists” as merely artificial hurdles erected by the professors.
By the end of March, I decided I couldn’t stand another year in the same social environment and with the same professors. I knew the teachers in a different school were likely to be no better than those at Southern, but they would be different. I wouldn’t begin classes with negative expectations or the sense that I already knew their views.
I decided to finish a religion major. It was the shortest path to graduation. And I would complete the requirements for pre-med. I signed up for organic chemistry that summer at Memphis State University and wrote to three Adventist colleges inquiring how long it would take to graduate if I transferred. Andrews University in southwestern Michigan responded it would take two full years to finish my degree. Walla Walla College in Washington wrote back saying they could not offer a good estimate of how long it would take. But they would be happy to consider me if I were to apply. After I was accepted they would figure out what was needed for graduation. Pacific Union College in the Napa Valley said I could likely finish in a year and a summer.
So I wrote PUC saying I would like to come. My mother was thrilled. She had attended there for two years and had fond memories of the campus nestled among the pines. But weeks passed and I heard nothing. Finally in mid August, I told my mother, “If I don’t hear something by the end of this week, I’m going to have to do something else.”
On Friday, in the mail was an envelope from PUC. No postage, no postmark, unsealed. My registration packet. It was the sign I wanted. I bought a ticket to Oakland.