The Coming Storm

Oops, I guess it’s been a week since I wrote. Time kinda got away from me there. But I mean, seriously, there’s only ONE more week of class left for me at Gustavus. Ever. Where did the time go?
Last Thursday night at the SPS meeting we elected next year’s officers. But after voting we had the coolest part — liquid nitrogen ice cream! Man, I don’t know that I’ll ever get tired of that. Soooo delicious! And then Prepare was very good again as usual, and some students from the U of M Prepare came down to tell us about something called Wheels for Sudan, a 40-mile bike ride coming up in June down around Red Wing, that will be a fundraiser to buy a truck to be used by people in Darfur to transport people and things. I think I’ll try to do that, that sounds like it’d be both fun and valuable. And then I talked with Gary until well after midnight about Camel Camp, an intensive 5-week summer-school-type course in Eden Prairie about discipleship, evangelism and that sort of stuff. Now I’m considering possibly doing that for the second half of the summer, even though it’d be five weeks of not being able to earn any income. Hmm, decisions. But if I don’t go to that I’ll probably still be going to the week-long Answers In Genesis conference in Virginia in mid-late July with my brother Nathan. But I probably won’t be applying for a job until I decide which thing I’m going to, sigh. I just hope my summer plans will be figured out before summer gets here!
On Friday evening a bunch of us Physics majors went down to Seven Mile Park between Saint Peter and Mankato for a campfire and some frisbee. We didn’t have any proper roasting sticks, so we had to improvise, meaning that occasionally a hot dog wound up on the ground or in the fire when the flames burned through the stick, oops. They were still fine, no worries. Back on campus after dark I joined up with a bunch of people from Gustavus Gaming Society to play a couple games of Capture the Flag with foam swords. 🙂 CTF is one of the things I’ll actually miss quite a bit when I leave Gustavus, even though we only play it a couple times per semester. The last game got a bit lame though, when the other team hid a flag in an illegal place, and when a few people just up and left mid-game without telling anyone. Argh. But I still had a good time.
Saturday was Honors Day here at Gustavus. But for the fourth straight year, I apparently did nothing worthy of being honored. It would’ve been nice to make the Dean’s list at least once, or to receive some special scholarship, but oh well, it’s not a big deal. Seriously, I’m not bitter or anything. I just kinda bummed around in the afternoon not really doing anything, and then in the evening I went to the Gustavus Symphony Orchestra concert, where they played Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.” It was amazing! I mean, seriously, they played it really well, it elicited a standing O right away! People loved it so much, in fact, that they’re considering playing it again at their final concert on Commencement Weekend, the night before graduation. That’d be sweet. After the concert I went to see “Kingdom of Heaven” in Mankato with a group of people, including Micah, Anders, Michelle, Maren, and a few others. It was a really good movie, up there with “Gladiator” and Braveheart” in my opinion. And it also did a good job of portraying neither side as being right in the Crusades.
After church Sunday morning my parents came down for my St Ansgar’s concert that evening. We went to lunch down at Chipotle in Mankato, it was the first time any of us had been there. I thought it was really good, but after hearing so many people rave about it as their favourite restaurant, truthfully I was expecting a little more than just a burrito bar. But it was good to see my parents again, I hadn’t seen them since the beginning of March, and I still haven’t been home since the very beginning of February. The skies darkened and thunderstorms rolled in when it was time for the concert, it made for an interesting atmosphere at the concert with it being so ominously dark outside and the frequent flashes of lightning all about, it was pretty cool. And the concert was good too, a combined concert with the Birgitta Singers (women’s choir) and the St Ansgar’s Chorus (men’s choir). I thought we did all 11 or 12 of our songs really well actually. And it was quite fun finally being in a concert on campus, this was my first and last concert at Gustavus that I will ever be a part of. I just wish I’d taken up St Ansgar’s last year, it’s been so fun! (I’ll post a picture of the concert hopefully sometime tomorrow in this post, when I can get my hands on some of the photos that were taken with Carl’s digital camera of the concert.) After the concert it was back to reality though, with Astrophysics lab (computer stuff, since it was raining outside). John P., my lab partner, decided to skip lab to watch a movie and play cards, leaving me to do everything by myself, which rather irked me, to say the least.
Monday I slept through Conditioning. Oops. I woke up at 9:15 to the sound of weed whackers outside my window, and realized there was no point in going to my 9am class. Oh well, I have three absences to use up for that anyway. I lost the third place game in the singles tournament in tennis class, thanks to my inconsistent serve. I’d beaten him a week or two ago, but apparently he was hung over that time. We were still pretty closely matched, I just made a few too many mistakes. The rest of the day was alright, including another thrilling “24” episode (only two left! it’s getting tense!!) and a great discussion about worship at Men’s Christian Fellowship, with Micah leading.
Tuesday morning we had a small golf tournament during golf class over by the Norelius putting green. I’m really bad at golf. Let’s just leave it at that. I had my final movement exam for jazz dance, I think it went alright, but I’ll have to wait until Michele shows us the grades. Then I was basically just working on my astrophysics assignment, with an interruption for Proclaim. It was basically a hymn night, some good solid hymns were sung, and there was also communion, which I thought very appropriate. There’s only one Proclaim left though, and that makes me sad. Well, that and there’s only one of everything left this year now basically. It’s really starting to set in that the end of my time here is near.
Well, today quite a bit happened. Fortunately I managed to get a nap in on the blue couches this afternoon, because I really needed all the energy I could to invest into tonight. Prepare Ministries sponsored a talk tonight in Olin 103 entitled, “Christianity, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Why Not?” with guest speaker John Weber. Getting this talk on campus has been in the planning stages for about 3-4 weeks, and only in the last week or so has it been a sure thing. We put up a lot of posters around campus advertising the talk, some of which got torn down at least once (and sometimes more), and we could tell that there was a huge buzz on the campus about the talk. We invited the Diversity Center, Queers & Allies, the Dems, the Chaplain’s Office and all the other Christian organizations on campus, in addition to a large number of people that we personally invited that might not be directly affiliated with one of those groups. We wanted all sorts of people to come, regardless of their opinions on the topic, and boy did they come! Olin 103 was absolutely PACKED, there had to have been at least 150 people that came, and about half to two-thirds of whom were either in disagreement with or hostile to our opinions, which I had expected would be the case. We knew beforehand that we were gonna catch a lot of flak and be persecuted for having this viewpoint proclaimed on campus, and it seems that that will probably indeed come to pass. We were praying and praying and praying for a long time before this talk, that it would go well, that God would speak through John, that it would reach the people who God wanted it to reach, and that we would be able to respond to all the questions in a loving and Christ-like manner; even some of my friends in Australia were praying for this, and other people’s friends in Peru, and all over the U.S., there were lots of people around the world praying for John and for this talk. At any rate, John basically laid out a few of the Scripture passages that have been and are central to the debate about homosexuality. He first laid out the “Gay Theology” views and arguments about each passage. (Note that the term Gay Theology is one that was coined and is used by many of the theologians who are proponents of those views. John went to great lengths to make that clear during his talk, yet some in the audience didn’t seem to be listening to that and were quite offended at John’s use of the term (as if he coined it), they felt it was too polarizing.) Then he moved onto the “Evangelical Theology” views and arguments about each passage in turn. It was a very fair, even-handed, and educational look at both sides of the argument, I really learned a lot. He basically just laid both of them out there, saying that they could both be wrong, but that they could not both be right, and strongly encouraged people to read the Scriptures and see if what he was saying was true, and to formulate their own conclusions about what the Bible is saying. Overall the audience was very courteous to him during his talk, in that there were none of the shouting or derogatory interruptions that I had feared might happen (although some of the faculty members in attendance were quite visible for their sneering, snickering, and distaste at what he was saying). The atmosphere really got testy, however, during the question & answer time. There were some good and thoughtful (and at the same time, predictable) questions asked, and some very rude and sneering remarks made by others; most of the questions seemed to me to be almost entirely emotional, and that was made even more obvious by how worked-up so many of the questioners were. At some very pointedly pro-homosexual comments/questions, there were even large amounts of applause and cheering by that segment of the crowd. But during the question time, John was joined by Karen and Rebecca (both Gustavus alums who are now staff workers for Prepare Ministries, they work for Prepare on all the different college campuses around Minnesota that Prepare is on), and they all dealt with the questions and attacks quite well, I thought. They maintained their calm, reasonable and loving tone, all while not compromising on the Truth and what the Bible says. In fact, the whole presentation moved my friend Matt to tears afterwards. He hadn’t (and still mostly doesn’t) agree with our viewpoint, but he said it was the first time he’s really heard a sound and reasonable side-by-side comparison of the two sides of the debate, and thanked us very much for having this talk brought to campus. He also said that while he might agree with a lot of the viewpoints of some of the viewpoints espoused by certain audience members during the question session, he was appalled at how rude some of them were, and very apologetic for it. He said that after one of the rudest remarks, he wanted to applaud Karen & Rebecca’s response to it, maintaining their patience and loving tone and not compromising on their beliefs, but that they moved onto the next question too quickly. But he feels so strongly about what happened tonight that he’s even planning on writing a letter to the editor of the Gustavian Weekly, the campus newspaper, about how offended he was by the rudeness and behavior of some in the audience. But we were hoping that God would reach out and use this talk to touch and move some people, and judging by Matt’s reaction, he has already started to work in some people’s lives as a result of this talk, which is extremely encouraging. We know that there will be persecution of us coming on this campus, but we are at the same time rejoicing and thanking God that he has begun to move people, and cause them to search out the Bible and find out what it really says. Overall we think the talk was a big success. The talk started at 7:30, ended a bit before 9, question time then went on till 9:30 officially, but people stayed on afterwards till 10:30 or so asking more questions, and some of us stayed and chatted with each other about what we thought of the night’s events until 11 or so. I invested so much energy into this talk, before, during, and now after (even though I wasn’t giving the talk), that I’m just wasted emotionally and physically. I feel like I just need some time to process tonight’s events, and writing all this is helping me do that. It’s “Curriculum II” night down at Patrick’s tonight, and Carl and some other people called shortly after 11 and told me I should head down there, but I had to bow out and just tell them the truth, that I’m not in any condition right now to go to the bar, that I’m too tired and have too many other pressing things on my mind. That and I have a presentation for Senior Sem to give tomorrow afternoon that I haven’t yet really started preparing for. But I think I’ll just go to bed and try to throw some things together tomorrow after a night’s sleep.