The problem with being a twenty-five year old, single, and inexperienced seminary graduate is that no church wants a twenty-five year old, single, and inexperienced seminary graduate for their pastor.
Except there was that one Czech church in Snook, Texas that invited me to candidate. When the chairman of the search committee showed me the parsonage, I asked him who the young lady was that was accompanying us. He got an embarrassed look and said, “Our former pastor was single when he came and ended up marring one of our girls. We thought maybe you might do that too”!
Not being interested in candidating as matchmaking, I exercised the old “when in doubt, go back to school” option: I enrolled and was accepted into the doctoral program in The History of Ideas at University of Texas, Dallas. My undergraduate work had focused on ancient near eastern history and philosophy in preparation for seminary. But now I wanted to study contemporary thought and culture. I had been highly influenced in my high school years by Dr. Francis Schaeffer’s Christian critique of western civilization, so I wanted to see if secular thinkers viewed our culture in the same terms. In essence, I was asking, “Was Francis Schaeffer right?”
As my studies progressed, I became fascinated by what my secularist professors were saying. And what they were saying was exactly what Francis Schaeffer had been saying: that western civilization cannot derive human values from science and materialism. To do so results in the dehumanization of humanity and turns any discussion of morality, beauty, meaning, spirituality and any other human value into irrational chatter. Personal beliefs, they were teaching, are mere ideologies that have no basis in objective reality.
I was doing well in my coursework until I hit a brick wall in the form of the professor in my modern art class. I discovered very quickly that she hated men, hated Christian men, and really, really hated any Christian man like me who was going into ministry. I knew my days in the PhD program were numbered when she started personally insulting me in class. Fortunately, getting a PhD wasn’t my goal. My goal was to gain an understanding of modern culture from a secular viewpoint, and that is what I did.
Needless to say, I’m not a fan of modern art. Take, for example, the outdoor display at Arvada Center for the Arts and Humanities in my hometown, Arvada, Colorado. I drive by it frequently and every time it reminds me of my days at UTD. I think of it as an intellectual cemetery for our culture. It’s proof positive that western civilization is dying at its core and that our cultural elites don’t believe in anything that even remotely resembles genuine human values.
And it’s also proof positive that only the personal and holy God of the Bible is a sufficient basis for humanity. Turning away from Him results in total absurdity.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Learn how to use your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.
_______________________________________________________________
Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
_______________________________________________________________
One thought on “The Modern Art Cemetery in Arvada, Colorado”
I do so enjoy reading your work, when I do.