in the transformative meaning of the resurrection for their lives that this faith phenomenon, imparted through the Holy Spirit, has been at work ever since through the body of Christ, we call the church.” Don, with a tone of defiance and disdain, then blurted out, “how can there be such a Spirit if Christ was just a dead man, wouldn’t all his claims then just be that of a crazy man.” Wilson tried to regain control of what had become a growing argumentative exchange between Don and him. “I would be glad to discuss this further with you, Don, after class, but we need to move on now.” No sooner had Wilson finished the sentence than Don, whose anger was overwhelming his ability to reason, blurted out accusingly, “Excuse me, Dr. Wilson, how is what you’re teaching us in any way preparing us to be pastors? I have only been a student here for a few weeks, but I already feel like the rug is being pulled out from beneath my faith.” “Don, I do not permit such outbursts in my class,” Wilson responded in an irate tone. Resting his forearms on the lectern Wilson leaned forward and fixing a stern gaze on Don that clearly indicated he had enough “You do not have to remain in this class if you don’t want to, but I will determine the material covered in class, and while you may not agree with it, you cannot impose your view on the class or me.” By this time, one could hear a pin drop in the classroom, and the rest of the students were now staring at Don. Knowing that his anger had once again escaped his control, and that this time it was in a setting where it had left him, in a way Don had not experienced before, vulnerable and exposed, Don felt he had only one out. He slowly picked up his books and walked down the aisle between the seats toward the door. Then motivated only by raw emotion and impulse, he turned and before exiting shouted at Wilson, “I am not sure how you can call my belief in the reality of the resurrection a view and still call yourself a Christian.” With Wilson’s disparaging gaze again fixed on him, the whole class turning around to stare at him, and feeling like he had nothing to lose, Don then got personal. “I think you are more into being a scholar than a Christian, Dr. Wilson, and would rather give a lecture on the resurrection than actually believe in it.” Don did not wait for a response from Wilson but wheeled around and walked out the door. The sudden release of his anger had felt cathartic, but now that it was spent, Don began to feel the shame and embarrassment his behavior now aroused within him. He also began to fear the consequences that were sure to result.
As Don left, walked down from the second floor where the classroom was, and out the door, it dawned on him fully how foolish his public display of anger had been. He was sure to be reprimanded by the administration. Even worse he had now established, for himself, a bad reputation among his classmates, one that was sure to spread across the campus where he already felt like an outsider. On his walk across the quadrangle back to his dorm room Don felt like a doomed man. He was relieved not to find his roommate there when he entered the room. Flopping face down onto his bed he managed after awhile to fall into a fitful sleep. When he awoke, he checked his wristwatch for the time, and realized he had slept through dinner. Trudging off to the library he resolved to salvage what little he could of the day; besides, he thought to himself maybe nothing too terrible will come of his classroom outburst. Arriving at his room later that night, David greeted him in his usual stiff, overly formal, and impersonal way. It was hard to tell if he had heard anything about the incident.
To relax before going to bed Don picked up a sports magazine laying on the floor next to his bed, and laying down on his side began to leaf through it. He soon felt sleepy and called it a night. When Don awoke in the morning he scrambled to get to the cafeteria for breakfast. Swinging by the in-house student mailboxes near the dorm’s front doors, he grabbed a couple flyers and one letter from his mailbox. As he read the words across the front of the letter, Don suddenly felt a cold clammy feeling come over him. In neat handwriting were the words “Dean’s Office.”
The Reprimand
Don opened the letter gingerly and read it. “Dear Student, the dean has requested that you meet with him in his office Wedneday morning at 11:30. Please be on time.” The dean’s signature made the letter look even more official. Any hope that his professor might let the incident pass was now gone. He wasn’t sure how much trouble he was in, but he would soon find out. Later that morning Don found his way to the door marked Dean’s Office in the administration building. He walked in and found himself in the dean’s secretary’s office. The door to the dean’s office lay behind and to one side of her desk, and had the words “Dean Mitchell” inscribed on a plaque on the door. The secretary, a woman who appeared to be in her fifties, wore her hair in a ’60s-style beehive on top of her head and had on ornate glasses that curved up on the ends. She reminded him of a no-nonsense librarian. As Don approached her desk, she looked up at him with a businesslike expression and said, “Can I help you,” in an authoritarian tone that lacked warmth or personability. “I am Don Campbell, I am here to see the dean,” Don responded. Without answering him, the secretary leaned forward and pushed a button on an intercom and said, “Dean, Don Campbell is here to see you.” Don could not make out the dean’s response, but as the secretary released the button, she looked back at him, and in the same manner and tone told him, “Take a seat, the dean will let you know when he is ready to see you.”
Five minutes later Don could hear the dean’s voice through the intercom, and the secretary told him he could now go into the dean’s office. Don opened the door to the dean’s office and walked in. The dean, who was still sitting behind his desk, started to rise when he saw Don come in. “Have a seat, Don,” the dean said, nodding to one of two leather armchairs on the other side of his desk. The dean waited for Don to be seated and then sat down himself again. Don then noticed that as Mitchell reclined back in his chair, he was looking him over, trying to size up what kind of unstable troublemaker he had in front of him. Such disciplinary meetings between the dean and a student were fairly rare, and the dean was particularly unaccustomed to dealing with a student like Don, who had been blatantly disrespectful to a professor during class. After a momentary pause the dean leaned forward in his chair and said, “Don, I am sure you know why you’re here, don’t you?” “Yes, sir,” Don responded. “What on earth caused you to challenge Dr. Wilson in class in such an inappropriate way?” The dean’s authoritarian judgmental tone made it clear that Don’s side of things would hold no merit with him. He also was not about to share any personal information about his past that might make the dean more sympathetic. More importantly, even given the dean’s patronizing judgmental tone, Don knew that he had handled the whole situation horribly, and had wished a hundred times over that he had taken Wilson up on his offer to talk more with him after class. It would have given Don a chance to cool down and he would, most likely, have taken a more respectful tone with Wilson. Still there was something about Mitchell’s overall demeanor that had annoyed him. Don knew if he lost it with the dean he could be kicked out of the seminary. His stark awareness of this reality helped him to keep his anger in check. Even so, Don felt driven to say something, in a calmer way, about the shock he had felt when Wilson questioned the resurrection. Don quickly figured that if he was going to register this concern in a more legitimate way he had better apologize first for his in-class behavior. “Dean Mitchell, I now realize I was out of line in the way I behaved in Dr. Wilson’s class,” Don started out, “but I hadn’t realized that belief in the resurrection would be questioned at any seminary, including here.” Don knew he was qualifying his behavior in Wilson’s class, but felt that, although it might have been better to state it separately, he had a valid point here.
The dean paused as if to weigh his words very carefully then said, “Don, we take academics very seriously here, and that means offering students the latest scholarship of some of the top scholars.” Don knew intuitively it would be better for him to hold his tongue, and say something like, “Yes sir, I understand.” But there was something about the dean’s patronizing authoritarianism that had struck a nerve. Don felt that the dean’s statement held a clear bias toward one liberal school of Christian scholarship. He also obviously believed that the seminary’s heavy reliance on its academic reputation to attract students made the undermining of what some at the seminary regarded as naïve faith beliefs of less consequence. Don, again aiming for a calm respectful tone, responded, “But Dean, if the seminary is also about preparing students to be pastors isn’t it possible that some scholarship, if presented, particularly by NT professors, as the predominant view might undermine this goal which is equally important?”