I recently watched an interview of Oklahoma Wesleyan University President Dr. Everett Piper, where he was being questioned about a piece he wrote that has found its way into the public forum titled: This is not a day care. This is a university! I looked up his article as his comments caught my attention relating to one of Covenant Christian Academy’s Character Trait lesson topics, Self-Control. Here is what he wrote:
This past week, I actually had a student come forward after a university chapel service and complain because he felt “victimized” by a sermon on the topic of 1 Corinthians 13. It appears this young scholar felt offended because a homily on love made him feel bad for not showing love. In his mind, the speaker was wrong for making him, and his peers, feel uncomfortable.
I’m not making this up. Our culture has actually taught our kids to be this self-absorbed and narcissistic. Any time their feelings are hurt, they are the victims. Anyone who dares challenge them and, thus, makes them “feel bad” about themselves, is a “hater,” a “bigot,” an “oppressor,” and a “victimizer.”
That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience.
I have a message for this young man and all others who care to listen. That feeling of discomfort you have after listening to a sermon is called a conscience. An altar call is supposed to make you feel bad. It is supposed to make you feel guilty. The goal of many a good sermon is to get you to confess your sins—not coddle you in your selfishness. The primary objective of the Church and the Christian faith is your confession, not your self-actualization.
If you want to read or hear Dr. Piper’s full comments you can do an internet or youtube search. However, let me jump to his closing thoughts and end it with a question.
Oklahoma Wesleyan is not a “safe place”, but rather, a place to learn: to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others; that the bad feeling you have while listening to a sermon is called guilt; that the way to address it is to repent of everything that’s wrong with you rather than blame others for everything that’s wrong with them. This is a place where you will quickly learn that you need to grow up.
This is not a day care. This is a university.
Certainly these comments are quite timely in view of what we have been seeing in the public square lately. But, here’s a somewhat rhetorical question I might ask Dr. Piper if I had an opportunity: In view of the title of the article, is there a difference in what is being taught in the “day care” and the university? And if so, should there be? Maybe that’s the point and the root to the problem. Maybe society is finally reaping what it has been sown and fostered in the day care center and up through the elementary and high school educational system that is garnering a society of self-centered individuals needing to learn that life isn’t about you, but about others, and that blaming others for everything that’s wrong with them will lead to many unhappy endings.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Prov. 22:6
