Amazing Grace that Saved a Jerk Like Me

Phil Bishop, Exercise Physiology
University of Alabama

 

It’s easy to get confused as a Christian professor.

I am often tempted to criticize my colleagues and students for what I feel are lives of hopelessness and frustration. I am tempted to correct their sinful behavior – until I see my own.

I became a Christian 48 years ago. I have been provided some tremendous Christian training. I have been to Christian retreats, conferences, and training programs. How is it that I am still so corrupt after all these years? Why do I lose my temper, cuss, and act like a jerk when I claim to be a follower of Christ?

As a professor, God has given me enormous opportunities, some of which I have blown one way or another. I have had great opportunities to share with colleagues, with students, and with strangers. Sometimes I miss out due to ignorance, sometimes due to fear, sometimes due to laziness.

Just recently a young professor asked me to meet and talk about how to be successful. I was flattered that she would ask me. We had a very nice chat. Later she told me how helpful our chat had been. But had I really been eternally helpful? I had shared all the mundane stuff about focus saying “No,” and about avoiding land mines. I had really endeavored to be of service on how to succeed.

But, what a great opportunity missed! I could have asked, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” I could have offered her a follow-up meeting to discuss what I believe constitutes real success, but I didn’t.

Several years ago we were considering hiring a friend of one of our incumbent faculty members. I ungraciously and insensitively was highly critical of the candidate’s lack of recent productivity. My colleague did not receive it well, and I think I did serious harm to our relationship by my callous critique. More recently I was trying to be funny in a faculty meeting and inadvertently insulted almost the entire group of junior faculty. They haven’t forgotten it, and neither have I.

Yes, most of my adult life I have been involved in some kind of ministry – with my church or on campus. But I can still act like a jerk. And I don’t even want to mention my being overly-competitive, jealous and self-centered.

In the movie Liar, Liar, Jim Carrey plays a corrupt lawyer (Fletcher Reede), who at one point is told by the judge, “I hold you in contempt.” Carrey’s reply to this is, “I hold myself in contempt.” And that’s where I stand. There’s no doubt I’m correct in holding myself in contempt to some degree. After all these years, I sometimes don’t even act remotely Christ-like.

But God doesn’t look on me that way. He sees the blood of Christ. God knows my sin even better than I do, yet He loved me enough to die for me (Rom 5:8). It is amazing to me, that despite my many flaws, God does love me, and does use me in the lives of others. I, who still need grace — lots of grace. Maybe I ought to show my Christian, and certainly my non-Christian friends in the university, a little of this same grace.

© 2009 Phillip A. Bishop Used by permission of Faculty Commons

The Lord Shuts — and Opens Doors

Edwin M. Yamauchi, Emeritus
Ancient History, Miami University (Ohio)

I graduated in 1960 with a degree in Hebrew and Hellenistics from Shelton College, a very small Christian school in northern New Jersey.

How small was it?  A split in the Bible Presbyterian denomination the year before I transferred to Shelton had reduced its student body to about 125 students.

God shut one door when professors I had wanted to study under had gone to Covenant College in Saint Louis. But I did get the opportunity to study Hebrew and Greek on a former millionaire’s estate with seven lakes in Ringwood, New Jersey.

Most providentially through Melvin Dahl, my instructor in Hebrew  (who had studied under the eminent Jewish Old Testament scholar Cyrus H. Gordon), the Lord opened the door for me to pursue doctoral studies at Brandeis University.

When I Did Not Receive Tenure

When I completed my Ph.D. in Mediterranean Studies in 1964, the Lord opened several doors of employment for me, including a position in the History Department at Rutgers-the State University of New Jersey.  When I did not receive tenure at Rutgers, the Lord opened the door for me to move to Miami University as an associate professor.  Within four years I had become a full professor.

Over the past 40 years I have had the privilege of teaching many graduate students and directing the dissertations of 16 doctoral students, all but two of whom were evangelicals.  I have also had students of students come to study with me.

My demands for these students were much higher than for students in other fields.  Those in European history had to have two languages, those in Ancient History had to have four languages — two modern and two ancient.  As a result, my students were those who were both older and more highly motivated.  They were well regarded by the department, and a few of them won teaching awards from the College of Arts and Sciences.

It became rather conspicuous that I was attracting more graduate students than other colleagues in the department, particularly those teaching in non-U.S. history fields.  And that became somewhat of a problem.

I served on the Graduate Studies Committee with about six other colleagues, reviewing applicants for admission.  One year Scott Carroll, one of my students teaching at Gordon College, encouraged one of his bright students, Jennifer Hevelone, to apply.  She had outstanding grades, superlative GRE scores, and enthusiastic letters of recommendation.

Opening Better Doors

But then in the voting of our committee a distinguished U.S. historian gave her a zero rating out of 10, which absolutely doomed her admission.  Dumbstruck, I asked, “Jack, why are you doing this?”  He calmly replied that we were getting too many candidates in Ancient History, when we needed to balance the fields.  There was some justification for his reasoning, which did, however, strike the committee as rather drastic.  I did not take this decision personally, and Jack and I have remained friends.

It turns out that the Lord in His providence shut the door to Jennifer, only to open better doors for her to enter.  After receiving the M.A. from the University of Chicago, Jennifer got to write her Ph.D. under Peter Brown at Princeton, the foremost authority on church history in Late Antiquity.  She is now the chair of the history department at her alma mater, Gordon College.

This MMM may be copied or forwarded for personal ministry purposes by including:
© 2008  Edwin M. Yamauchi    Used by permission of Faculty Commons

Next Page »