education

6 Tips for Surviving Fundy U

236 Comments

1. Break a small rule every day. In a low-trust and high-pressure environment small acts of defiance are mentally healthy. A smidgen of rebellion establishes that you are your own person and not just the puppet of a larger machine. But…

2. When you aim to misbehave tell nobody. And that means nobody. Your roommate, your study buddy or your crush will get a serious case of “conviction” during the next revival and confess all your misdeeds. Unless you would literally trust your life with that person then don’t tell them about your shenanigans. You can however…

3. Keep a journal. You will want documentation later of exactly how crazy this time was because people in the outside world will not believe you. Trust us on this. When you want to write in your journal it’s time to…

4. Find a refuge. Find a place on campus that you can go where nobody else goes so that even when you can’t get out you can still be “away.” I used to climb to the very top of the stairs and stare at the Waffle House sign across the highway just to remind myself that the outside world still existed. Unfortunately I never learned that the real key is to…

5. Be just bad enough. If you look like a “good kid” then the administration will worry about trying to save your soul and manipulate your conscience to make you miserable. If you seem like you’re ambivalent and a bit of an outsider then they’ll worry more about keeping your tuition money and your life will be easier. But that’s only temporary. The real trick is…

6. Get out as soon as you can. The first five techniques can only protect you from so much. The sooner you get out the sooner you can start to heal. We’ll be here for you when you do.

236 thoughts on “6 Tips for Surviving Fundy U”

    2. One of the benefits of being on vacation and not working. Still waiting on my butt cushion from several weeks ago…..*crickets chirping***

      1. You haven’t gotten yours? I donated my fourth to charity. One only needs so many………

  5. Yep, #4 is essential. I could get stir crazy very quickly if I didn’t have any place of refuge. One semester it was my laptop right outside my room and another semester it was going to another dorm and playing Mario Kart 64.

  6. My first fundy U trip I was fresh out of Fundy High and living on “campus”, but with no fences or dormitory check-persons, we could come and go as we pleased, just be in by 11:00. Which I usually was. I kept a perpetual “Late Work Permission”, so even if I wasn’t in for evening inspection, one of my roommates would suggest I must be working late in the Dining Hall, and I was never questioned.
    Except once. When two of you almost run over your dorm-checker about midnight on a Dunkin Donut run, (half price that late- $1.25 a dozen) it is obvious you were not working. That one started a bit of trouble. Which we mostly got out of. But that would make a long story longer, so…………………..

    2. Okay, Lady. You asked for it. The teaser is probably more entertaining, though.
      I lived in a “house dorm” at TTU. Ours was a converted apartment house, three rooms, six guys. Plenty of room. One night my roommate came in from his fast food job. I heard him fumbling for change and asked him what he was doing. “Making a doughnut run.” I decided to ride with him. In the alley beside the dorm we almost ran over the dorm checker, whose main jobs were to make sure we didn’t bust curfew and cleaned our rooms. He took them seriously, and was looking for lights in the rooms.

      When we got back, he came in and asked if anyone there had a red Ford. We said no. (I later bought that Mercury from my buddy’s dad). He wrote us up for various infractions, and the dean of men let us off with basically a hand slap, since we had late work permissions. My buddy would have gotten off scot-free if I hadn’t gone. The checker was angry we got away with our indiscretion and began to write us up daily for not having a clean room. When we got enough demerits to be campused, we decided to take it seriously. The dean of men removed all of our room-duty demerits, because they were all after to doughnut run incident and it was obvious retaliation.

      We were never written up for anything else by the dorm checker, who held his loss of power against us the rest of the year.

      1. This is one of the most insane things I’ve ever heard. Why is someone worrying about what GROWN ADULTS do at 11 pm? I didn’t go to sleep before 1 am while a student even if it was just staying up to do homework and watch movies.

      2. Why they let male students have vehicles while at Fundy U is beyond me. Everyone knows that boys are terrible drivers. Besides, automobiles can be used for illicit purposes. Only the MOG should have a vehicle.

      3. I’ve been suspecting for a while you are a TTU grad, myself as well from the old days. Got a lot of great stories of my time served there. After beating Lee at home, me and a bunch of my buddies piled into my 65 Rambler and drove around campus causing quite a disturbance. Campus security got in the chase. Little did we know, Clyde Durnell aka “Barney Fife” called in backup, Dr. Cliff…once we figured Dr. Cliff was involved we though best to pull over…”Boys I want to see you in my office first thing Monday morning.” Fast forward to Monday…Cliff let us off the hook with a big smile, “well done boys, well done!” True story…still brings a smile to my face. Wonder what ever happened to old Clyde???

        1. I bought a ’69 Rambler very shortly after Dr. Nichols recommended I not come back.
          I miss that car.

        2. Since Cliff had a few indiscretions of his own to hide … which eventually caught up with him, it’s no wonder he let you off the hook.

  7. *ticks points off on fingers*

    1…2…3…4…5…6–yup, par for course! I did every single one of these. My personal broken rule was my mp3 player the size of a finger that I kept in my pillow. After lights out, “when all your life seems to shrink, the walls of your bower closing in about you, a hutch to trammel some wild thing in,” I’d listen to Bebo Norman and Sanctus Real and Coldplay over and over.

    I also wore pants to my restaurant job across the river, and changed out of them in the car on my way home. You do what you gotta do.

    I read over my college journal sometimes and am always surprised by how miserable I really was. So the next time my mom says I was “so happy there” I can pick a page at random and prove that no, I definitely was NOT.

    1. Funny memory about Coldplay.

      Apparently my financial advisor (easily my least favorite person there for his manipulativeness alone), browsed my facebook and noticed that I liked Coldplay, and brought it up at my last climatic meeting with him. (Can I just stop and make note of the fact that my having Coldplay on my facebook was the worst thing he had to point out to me?)

      Anyway, he was going on about why it’s worldly and doesn’t help me spiritually. It is then I noticed that he had a HUGE poster on the wall with the Tennessee Volunteers football logo, and I think another big picture of the stadium (or maybe both together; i don’t remember exactly, but it was BIG.)

      So I pointed it out. “Well you have a big picture of Tennessee football on your wall. I don’t think that helps you spiritually either. No, you don’t spend all of your time on it but you enjoy and just simply like it. How is my liking Coldplay any different?”

      And what do you know, he changed the subject…..

      1. Good for you!

        It’s so annoying how certain fundies never see that they themselves are the same kind of “worldly” when it comes to sports as they accuse other Christians of being in other areas.

        1. Dear Pastor’s Wife:

          As I see it, no one questions whether Biblical condemnations of worldliness are Biblical or whether worldliness is condemnable; the issue [as I see it] is that some people overlay their preferences and prejudices on the text and make God represent their case for them.

          Christian Socialist

        2. I agree. Worldliness is condemned in the Bible. The problem is in defining what worldliness is.

          I posit that it is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. It is much deeper and more pervasive than a fundy could imagine. They think a girl wearing jeans is worldly, for example, but I see in Scripture the teaching that that someone wanting to flaunt themselves or exalt themselves as being more important than another is being worldly.

      2. Dear Easterilly241:

        Love your concluding line. During my self-terminated stay at Snob Clones Perversity, I was able to confront several staff persons and a teacher on points where the school is patently unbiblical. It was interesting. They didn’t just shut down, they looked positively fearful. Response? A FAST change of subject.

        Christian Socialist

        1. I was the 17 yo kid who had the ovaries (and the dubious honor) of telling Roger Voegtlin that he was an idiot (maybe not in those exact words) for thinking that Christians could be demon possessed. It went over about as well as a lead balloon.

          At the end of the day, I survived not one but three fundy Us. It’s a miracle that they survived me, though.

        2. Were you trying to be a good community organizer and cause disruption with your Marxist propaganda?

        4. Dear A. and Comrade stacymcanderson:

          Stacy:

          You’re saying what — that BJU administration workers and teachers may have no credible reply to Marxian analysis? Curious …

          Luke 9 records that Jesus sat the 5,000 men [plus women and children] in groups of fifty prior to distributing food among them. Apparently, Jesus had no problem with community organization.

          Marx developed theories on currency, exchange rates, rent, interest, the market, property, productive relations and the like. Economists do that stuff. Economists do that. Is that a problem?

          Stacy, if you can’t offer credible replies to Marxian thought, you might want to stop raising the matter. People may conclude that you do not answer because you cannot answer. Or they may conclude that you secretly are a Marxist, and you are using ‘faint replies’ to urge his thinking on others.

          In response to A. and stacymcanderson:

          At 18 years, I had the testicles [and curious duty] to point the Dean of Men to the lie in which I caught him. Incidently, this is the same Dean of Men who, in a Sunday ‘church’ service, preached Hugo Grotius’ Governmental/Moral theory of atonement. That struck me as odd as it was my understanding that only Calvin’s doctrine of vicarious atonement could be proclaimed from that pulpit.

          My experiences convinced me that at BJU [at least], conformity matters more than a relationship with God or the truth of God.

          Christian Socialist

        5. “Marx developed theories on currency, exchange rates, rent, interest, the market, property, productive relations and the like. Economists do that stuff. Economists do that. Is that a problem?”

          Yes, that is a problem. Marx’s theories are imposed, centrally-planned, and inefficient The true market would solve many of mankind’s problems. One of the simplest theories of Economics 101 is that price controls don’t work. Central planning never creates anything even close to efficiency, fairness, or quality. The only thing that is of superior quality are weapons of mass destruction, used in the conquering of free states don’t comply with their wishes.

          But more than simply reducing it to capitalism vs. Marxism, the main problem today and throughout history can be credited to central banking.

        6. How many times can stacy admit in a single month that “she” worships the “free market” as her savior. Fortunately for the rest of us she doesn’t seem to know what a real free market actually is.

        7. Jesus had a lot to say about following mammon Rob but no one preaches much on that in our ‘Mercian free market brand of Christianity.

        8. Dear stacymcanderson:

          You describe not socialism but state-run capitalism, and it is all the failure that reactionaries claim. Capitalism is impossible without war, and our history shows it. As for what creates nothing, capital sits idly without labor, creating nothing.

          Is a preemptive dismissal of central banking your best shot? If a tiny elite holds our money supply, how will social relations will be arranged? Is that ‘freedom,’ or is it ‘fiefdom?’

          At some point, you’ll need to start referencing the many Biblical motifs I detailed on the other post. Are you up for it? From what I’ve seen to date, stacymcanderson, you lack the strength of your stated convictions.

          Christian Socialist

        3. Rob M.

          I don’t worship the free market. Since so many of the users at this blog do worship Socialism, I only bring up the topic as a balanced and sane diversion to that craziness.

        1. stacy you are right! I mean how can a league that has a team called the “Packers” be right? Who do TEH GAYZ root for when the “Packers” play that team from Homo Central (a.k.a. San Francisco)? Amen?

      5. What would have been really odd is if he would have “liked” Penn State, the creepiest, gayest, sickest, most perverse football program in the world with their massive cover up of homosexual child-trafficking.

        1. My former IFB pastor was a die-hard Penn State Football fan, and continued to defend them well after the whole thing blew up…

        2. Donald,

          You fit in well here! Your church is pro-homosexual and pro-child-trafficking! Most of the users on here would not have the courage to oppose Penn State and that slime organization because of their pro-gay stance. I, for one, am against Penn State. Anyone who supports that sick, twisted program is a sick, twisted person.

        3. it is a fallacy to equate pedophilia with homosexuality. was that your intent?

        6. stacy gets me hot when she(?) talks about gay sex. It makes me want to listen to Barbara Streisand music and look at pictures of Judy Garland. Everybody get their homo on!

        7. “Troll.

          Isn’t it best to ignore such?”

          Yes, homosexuality is very intimately and seriously intertwined with pedophilia. To ignore this fact is rank foolishness. Homosexual behavior is not natural and is a learned addiction. Quite often, but not always, it is learned from sexual abuse.

        8. What’s sad is that you people are so jaded and brainwashed and against the truth so much that anyone who dares speak the truth is automatically labeled as a “troll.” LOL….nice comeback.

        9. Stacymcanderson, you are both grotesquely misinformed and offensive. please put down the kool-aid. it doesn’t matter if the kool-aid is red or green, put it down.

        10. JesusLovinHomo. If your name infers that you are a Jesus Loving Homosexual I feel very sorry for you. Because you have been deceived that you can pursue a homosexual lifestyle and love Jesus. If your name infers that Jesus loves homosexuals (just as much, just as much as He loves thieves, liars, murderers, etc.) and thus, you love homosexuals, then i applaud you for passing on God’s grace that you have received. If you are a homosexual who through the grace of God and through the power of Christ fights the homosexual tendencies every day, what an inspiration you are!

          If you care to clarify what your name means, I’d be interested in knowing.

        11. What’s sad is that you accuse places like Bob Jones of not dealing with occurrences of sexual abuse that they knew about in the correct manner. Yet, when a place like Penn State not only “knows about sexual abuse,” but actively secretly promotes it and even is part of a national child-trafficking sexual abuse network, you totally ignore that. The double-standards are just strange.

        12. JLH,

          I did not say that all homosexuals are pedophiles. That is a complete lie, and I agree with you there. But, most homosexuals have been abused in some way: sexually, emotionally, physically, verbally. It is not a normal or natural behavior and people are not born that way, and some event in life triggers it. That’s one reason why it’s evil to hate or make fun of homosexuals. They have been through a lot already to have become that way, and now they are trapped in a sexually addictive lifestyle that can be difficult to break free from.

        13. Fuck off, you moron. Most abuse survivors never hurt another person (i.e., pedophilia or any other kind of abuse), and a history of abuse has nothing to do with a person’s innate sexuality.

          THAT SAID: Gay kids are more likely to be kicked out of their homes, which, imo, is abusive, and are more likely to be bullied and abused by their peers than their straight peers are.

          If you want to keep perpetrating damaging myths, take your uninformed, ignorant self elsewhere.

        14. A, I think you misread the comments section. No one said that all homosexuals abuse people. That is a lie and a fraud. Although, many, if not most homosexuals were themselves abused in some way, whether sexually or not. Since it is not a natural state to be in, there was some traumatic triggering event or event(s) that caused it. That’s one reason why I don’t think it’s nice to be rude or demeaning to homosexuals because of their lifestyle. They’ve already been through enough abuse as it is, and to add more is just cruel. I don’t agree with the homosexual lifestyle, but I realize that it’s an addiction that so many people have almost had forced upon them, and we need to realize that. It’s difficult to condemn someone for living a lifestyle that in many cases occurred to them through negative circumstances. We are all sinners and have our own struggles, and this is just one of them.

        15. Norm,

          From the tone of your message, I’ll think I’ll take a pass on providing additional information to you about the specifics of my personal life. I desire neither your pity nor your applause. and I do not aspire to be your inspiration.

        16. Fair enough. Don’t know what the “tone” of my message was. I said what I meant, and I meant what I said. No “undertones” were meant. Later.

        17. Hey Stacy…would you care to cite any reputable source for your conclusions on the possible root causes and predictors of homosexuality…other than your MOG preacher, any Hyles publication or any source associated with the Fortress. Also, enlighten me on the Penn St child trafficking ring…sounds fascinating.

    2. Changing pants in the car? While driving? That must have been interesting.

      Are you a contortionist?

        1. I’ve done it. I also used to just put them on, pull the legs up to my knees, and then put on a long skirt over them. Then I’d only have to put the skirt on and off, not the whole shebang.

      2. Oh yes. I had a stretchy skirt that I’d pull over my head, then shimmy the pants off. That wasn’t hard, it was putting them on that was awkward. Fortunately I could usually change into them at my office before going to said restaurant job.

        1. Changing clothes in a vehicle isn’t hard unless there are back zippers involved. Not even pants are all that difficult. You just don’t take the skirt off until the pants are on.

      3. Ha, I’ve done that more than a few times myself. Not exactly the safest thing to do, I’ll be honest, but you gotta do what you gotta do, right?

        A lot easier in stretchy/soft pants than jeans, though, I’ll tell you that, and it’d better be a reasonably full skirt too.

        I never have managed a dress, though. 😛

        1. Never changed clothes completely while driving, but I have taken off jackets/sweaters. If I’m going to actually change I park first.

      5. Are we really going to talk about the times we took our clothes off in a car? It might lose SFL the G rating.

        1. You don’t have to take your clothes off to have a good time, that’s what my grandma always used to tell me. And she was right.

        6. is this then not the time to mention the time my commander’s driver in iraq peed in a bottle while driving in a convoy and didn’t spill a drop? because my commander was pretty impressed with her for that, and its all I could think of while reading these comments about changing clothes while driving.

        7. Daze, fortunately that’s not an accomplishment I’ve ever had to aim for. That’s a bigger accomplishment than you’d think given the button flies on the DCU.

          I can’t imagine doing that in a war zone. Roads in New York are bad enough.

        8. Daze, We aim to please. You aim too, please. My younger brother tells a storu of the time he was a passenger on a friend’s l car travelling to the airport when he badly needed to pee. Unfortunately, they were in a real rush, and didn’t have te to stop. He managed to find a bottle which had contained shampoo.. It was fortunate that by brother has a good aim. It was less fortunate that the bottle still contained shampoo, and suds went everywhere….

  8. #1 – I tried to never break the rules. I wasn’t interested in turning other people in (though I also didn’t want to hear about their indiscretions), but I wanted to keep the rules myself. My fiance (now husband) would get a little annoyed because I was always so paranoid (and rightly so because someone DID turn us in anonymously because they saw us hugging on Paris Mt. State Park, where we could go because I was in grad school). We were socialed for a week or two. I was humiliated.

    #2 – SO TRUE!!! Isn’t it ironic that conviction caused people to confess OTHER people’s “sins”? (Like the Firefly reference, btw.)

    #3 – I was so determined to not confide in someone who couldn’t handle the truth (not that I was doing anything) that I never dared right my real thoughts on paper even. But a simple record of experiences does make for proof later in life for incredulous outsiders or one’s own self.

    #4 – I didn’t have one. I think books, which I already read voraciously, were my escape.

    #5 – I hadn’t realized this, but I think you’re right in many cases. Show yourself to be pliable and sensitive and they know they’ve got you and can manipulate you. Show yourself independent and secure (though not TOO rebellious) and they have to keep “courting” you.

    1. Sometimes all I can do is shake my head in disbelief. A Grad student. A fiancè. Hugging in a public place. Aaaand… Busted? ¡Ai, Dios Mio!

      1. Even though I was a married student, I was not supposed to touch my wife on campus. I think the purpose of that rule was to keep from confusing visitors who might see us holding hands and not know we were married.

        I’m pretty sure I broke the no contact rule with more than just hand-holding.

        1. I was a grad student at BJU, and one of the first things my wife and I did after we got married was to go onto the Bridge of Nations and kiss.

        2. I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only student to have ever kissed his wife on that bridge.

          The only thing that would have made their physical contact rules sillier would have been to make a rule we that couldn’t ride in a car on campus unchaperoned, in case a visitor saw us and became confused. That would be a logical extension of BJU’s “reasoning”.

        3. Pffft. My then-boyfriend & I did a lot more than just hold hands on campus, too.

          There was a lot you could do during Artists’ Series. And by the ATM. And in the back room of the Campus Store. And at athletic events…

    2. This will be my only chance to correct Pastors Wife ever !!! @3she wrote “right my thoughts Should have been write my thoughts. So exciterd ….will never happen again!!

  9. At my fundy high school, there was, in the pace room, a little beam of light that would make it’s way through the wall (apparently the wall had holes) and land on my desk. They kept all the windows shut because the air conditioning didn’t really work, so had they opened them, it would’ve been 90 degrees instead of something like 78. Anyway, I hated that there was no sunlight, but that one little beam always made me smile. I could pretend I was outside, at least. It helped on the really hard days.

    1. Pardon, they kept the curtains shut, not the windows. I mean, those were shut, too, but that’s not the point I was trying to make….

        1. No way!!! A fellow A.C.E attendee? Wow!!! I went to A.C.E school from 7th through 12th. My wife still laughs at me ALL the time when we talk about elementary school memories. She says, “Oh, that’s right, you didn’t go to ‘real school’. HA HA HA!!!

        2. I went to a PACE school for first grade. I was 4, but could read, so I was stuck in a room with 6-7 year olds. All I remember was this dark, dark cubby I stared at all day. Ugh! I never could recognize my “teacher” because I never saw her face.

        3. Yep, from eighth to twelfth. It was miserable. And our supervisor would only check our work the first week or so of school. Otherwise, he just played on his computer and ignored. There was a girl who started her period, had to go to the restroom, obviously to take care of it. She asked several times, even told him it was an emergency – but he still said no. So she took a tampon out of her purse and shook it and said, “Mr. so and so, I NEED to go to the bathroom!” She got detention.

  10. And goodness, can I count my small rebellions?

    No piercing in the cartilage of the ear? Check!
    No cell phones? Check! (I would hide in my cubicle and text.)
    No belly button piercings? (Though how they were going to check that was beyond me.) Check!
    Nothing secular on our graduation tables? Check! (Although they caught my John Lennon quote and made me take it down.) (The pastor was a retired hippie.)

    I also wore pants a year after I’d graduated to visit my cousin who attended there. The vice principal pulled me into her office and gave me a lecture about it.

      1. Hey Norm, wait I’M NORM!! Another NORM? Could it be? Anyhow, is your calling me a homophobe in reference to my comments to JLH?

        1. Please tell me Norm…could you force yourself to change from heterosexual to homosexual? No? Well then why do you think it is so simple for someone why identifies as gay since a childhood (in the face of immense condemnation and persecution btw) to just decide to be hetero? Why have all the “gay conversion” ministries failed miserably…even with people who desperately wanted to change? Are you saying there is absolutely no genetic component?

  11. 6 Tips:
    1. Don’t go.
    2. Don’t go.
    3. Don’t go.
    4. Don’t go.
    5. Don’t go.
    6. Don’t go.

    Although I gotta say, PCC was instrumental in getting me out of fundamentalism. At first I was content there, having been born and raised in a very strict fundamentalist home. Oddly enough, PCC felt sort of freeing the first couple years. I had more freedom there than at home. But around my junior year, I realized that I was 20 and wondered why the heck I was still being treated this way as an adult.

    #4 resonated: I lived in Bradley and I would go to the top of the stair tower and look out at the houses behind the dorm–I know they were probably PCC-owned but I found comfort in looking at those houses and imagining the normal lives being led.

    1. I agree with the “Don’t go,” especially if you’re a woman. Go get a real education, and then get ready to support yourself and do good for others, and give yourself a chance to select friends and a possible husband from a pool of candidates better and broader than a bunch of preacher boys.

  12. Loved these. In reference to #3: Anytime I want to convince someone that BJU was truly insane, I tell them about one of the times I was *really* a bad girl there: the time I wore pants out of the girls’ dorms, across campus, to wait for friends in front of Rodeheaver, or the time I wore jeans, and not slacks, to Charleston for a day at the beach.

  13. Aiming to break a small rule every day is still, ultimately, a concession to living a life according to somebody else’s rules. Instead, follow conscience. Of course, as a person who has grown up in Fundamentalism, you will first need to learn what conscience is. So commit to learning what conscience is, then commit to developing your own conscience, and then follow conscience. You’ll find, if you do that, that rather than living by making concessions to rules (breaking small ones to stay sane), you can abide by petty rules unless they violate your conscience. And if/when you break a rule in that situation, you are dealing with real issues of right and wrong, good and evil, and not petty cultural distinctives.

    1. After graduating from FU, I really struggled with Romans 14:23 – “But if you have doubts about whether or not you should eat something, you are sinning if you go ahead and do it. For you are not following your convictions. If you do anything you believe is not right, you are sinning.” (Of course, I read it in the KJV, but it still would have bothered me had I read it in the NLT.)

      I had been told all my life that certain things were wrong. As an adult, I was reconsidering that, yet because I’d been told they were sinful, I did have doubts. I wondered.

      For someone who tends to be a questioning, introspective, “doubtful” person, this verse would keep you in tremendous bondage: you couldn’t do ANYTHING!

      1. That is one of their primary methods of manipulating and controlling people.

        (1) Drill it into people’s heads that if they have even the tiniest shred of doubt about *anything*, however small or far-fetched that doubt may be, it is a sin to do it.

        (2) Spend the rest of their time furiously sowing doubt about anything they don’t want you to do (and they are not above stooping to logical fallacy, half-truth, and untruth to sow that doubt).

        1. At least some of the people Paul was writing to had studied rhetoric and logic in school, and so they already had a nose for a con. But that kind of thing has been largely tossed out of the window in Real True Christianity.

      2. I have and still do struggle with this tremendously!!!!! Do I think something is wrong because I was taught my whole entire life that it’s wrong, or do I believe it’s wrong because I have a personal conviction that it’s wrong?

        This covers all aspects of life. Music, dress, entertainment choices, Sunday activities, friends. And honestly I think all aspects of life SHOULD be effected by following Christ and everything SHOULD be “filtered” through following Him.

        I was raised strict, conservative, holiness. I got out of it when I moved from mom and dad’s house at 21 (FAR out of it). In that time period of my life (from 21 to 34) I had friends who I viewed as good Christians. Then in October of 2012 God smacked me upside the head and drew me to Him. Now that I look at those friends I had that were “good Christians” while I was a “raging heathen” I see that they aren’t anywhere near the “Christians” I grew up around. So it really throws me into a weird space of what “Christian” is. And that’s one reason why the discussions I’ve been in on here recently about the inerrancy of the Bible are very important to me. People claim the name of Christ from many diverse walks of life (super strict to rather liberal) and if I don’t have some rock solid basis to judge myself on (which I believe is the Bible) I’ll be all over the place trying to compare myself to “other Christians.

        Well, this post may have went down a rabbit hole, but sometimes my thoughts just do that.

        1. Aren’t we not supposed to compare ourselves to others?

          I think Paul said something to that effect but I have no idea where it is.

        2. I think I know what your saying Lady Semp but the double negative is throwing me just a little. “Aren’t we not supposed”.

          I believe Paul says we are not to compare ourself to others. 2 Cor. 10:12. I will say NOT comparing myself to other professing Christians is an every day battle. Some professing Christians I LIKE to compare myself to, because I feel like I’m a “better” Christian than them. Some professing Christians I hate to compare myself to because I feel like I’ll NEVER be that “good” of a Christian. And thus, I shouldn’t compare myself to anyone. Easier, much easier, said than done.

        3. The double negative was to make a point. I could have eliminated both negatives but then the question would have had a tone to it that I didn’t like. “Are we supposed to compare ourselves?” would have come across — to me, anyway — as self-righteous and condescending.

        4. I understand Lady Semp 🙂 . I was pretty sure I understood what you were saying. It’s hard to get your “tone” across in writing…

        5. Norm,

          Your post was insightful. The so-called purpose of this blog is to explore the many-faceted beliefs and practices unique to IFB’s. Many of those beliefs are odd and funny, and not related at all to whether one is a Christian or not, contrary to what they may think.

          But the site has devolved into much more than that and has been overtaken by leftists whose pet topics and views they promulgate include such things as how the Bible is not inerrant, so let’s decide what we want to take seriously or not. So instead of making fun of the fake fundamentals of the IFB, the site has become one to make fun of the real fundamentals, and that is no laughing matter.

        6. Stacy, I read most of your posts. I agree with some of them, I disagree with some of them. On this one, I don’t agree that this site has been overtaken by leftists. I have found many who question the foundation of the Bible, it’s inerrancy, it’s infallibility, it’s authority, even that every word in it was inspired by God. That it “contains the word of God” which suggests that it also contains other things that are “not the word of God”.

          Stacy, I must agree with you 100% wholeheartedly that this is no laughing matter. If God’s Word isn’t really His Word, then what foundation do we have? In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. I believe this refers to Jesus. Jesus is the Word. The scriptures tell about the Word. If anyone wants to wrangle about historical facts that seem contradictory or whatever, okay, I’m have not done enough research to know why those contradictions, or seemingly contradictions rather, are there. But I do know we can’t throw out any principles the Bible teaches and say they were “cultural” or “customary to the time”. And by “principles” I’m not talking about head coverings on women in and not eating shellfish and stuff. Those aren’t principles.

          So anyhow, Stacy, I agree with you on the fact that we need to accept the entirety of the Bible as inspired by God. Not pick and choose what we think was inspired.

    3. I’m not so sure about following conscience; seems too much like relying on one’s self. But perhaps it’s just a matter of words, and conscience and what I wrote below are really the same thing.

      I like the “more sure word” of the Scriptures. Study them and sincerely ask the Spirit of God to show you what He would have you do, and follow the Scriptures. According to Titus, the grace of God teaches us to live soberly, righteously, and Godly.

      The Scriptures never say that “X is worldly”; the longer I live, the more I’m convinced that what makes something “worldly” is one’s attitude about X; if you’re doing it to mimic the world, it may well be “worldly”; but if you enjoy X and don’t care what others think, it may not be “worldly”.

      There are too many lists today and not enough people following Jesus Christ and listening to His Spirit.

      1. You don’t understand the theology of conscience. You do have to educate your conscience. That’s a vital part of living up to having a conscience. But you cannot educate your conscience by means of a fundy rule book. You have to diligently study the Bible and ethics of those who live godly lives (not just the ones who make themselves famous and claim to live godly lives) to properly educate your conscience.

      2. try to think of it not from a perspective of “theology of conscience” but from a disposition toward rebellion. It’s the rebellious attitude of the heart that wants to do something that we think is wrong, therefore it’s wrong.

  15. “If you seem like you’re ambivalent and a bit of an outsider then they’ll worry more about keeping your tuition money and your life will be easier”

    I have to disagree with this one. Ambivalence is sure way to put yourself on the radar as being spiritually deficient or lacking in Christian-growth.

    And while they will worry about keeping your money, they won’t hesitate to keep taking it and ultimately decide that your ambivalence (or whatever excuse they conjure up) is so much of problem that you are expelled (or suspended) — just when it’s too late to withdraw and get your money back (or your degree).

    I’ve seen this happen many, many times at BJU.

    1. I have to agree with this assessment. My recollection of nearly 30 year ago at BJU was that the compliant do-gooder was cherished, the outward rebel was appreciated as someone who could be publicly and harshly made an example of in the sense of “see what happens to evil sinners”, but the appethetic, under-the-radar-not-playing-the-fundy-games student…those types seemed to drive leadership crazy because they wouldn’t conform outwardly nor could they be readily punished for breaking rules. The only viable response was to prevent elevation to an APC position and/or place the offender on “spiritual probation” (a term which still make me smile to this day). As in my case, this usually occurred when the ambivalent student become a senior. They actually told me if I did not come off spiritual probation by the end of the semester, I would be expelled…off course they could never really tell me why. Long story short…the monitor who was supposed to counsel me transferred to another college after about 1 month and I never heard another word from anyone. Four &%$@#*& years of my life wasted…

      1. I do see what you’re saying.
        But I was one of those who coasted by under the radar. Never distinguished myself for either good or bad. But they didn’t so much “court me” as forget I was there.

        1. B.R.O., Suffice it to say your former fundy CEO was one of those I kept at arms length. I’d have never trusted him.

      2. I worked at the BJU Information Desk, was a PC by the the 2nd semester sophomore year. Turned down being a monitor b/c I met more girls at the Info Desk. My close circle of friends knew I was planning on going to Dallas Seminary. No one ever narc’d me out. Had BJU found out they’d have booted me out. I broke a Whole Lot of rules, including the awful sin of holding girls’ hands in Vespers. That was 34+ years ago. I don’t know how it is now in crazy-land.

        1. Obviously my former fundy CEO wasn’t in your close circle of friends or you would have been booted out!

        3. Oh, and no offense intended, but back at BJU I thought your former fundy CEO was an arrogant self righteous prick with a stick up his ass. But there I go, sugar coating it again.

        4. BJg:

          You really need to come out of your shell and speak more freely. Be more honest about your personal feelings.

          I know. You’re a work in progrees. And so we all are!

          🙂

        5. B.R.O, my brother, I’ve been a work in progress for 57 years, and I’m preparing to retire. Hell I don’t know if I’ll ever be complete. But I know I don’t have a stick up my ass like he who will remain nameless:)

    2. This may have to do with where you went to school. I went to PCC, and the ambivalence thing worked for me. The only thing that ever really got me into trouble was that I didn’t mind telling people when I disagreed with them. I never did it in an obnoxious way, but if someone makes a claim, I usually ask them why. I discovered very quickly that “why” was basically a forbidden word.

      1. Both “why” and “quit” are cut out of the fundy dictionary. Unless it’s the “quit you like men” verse.

        1. Lady Semp, Please see my post about the dorm meeting teaching about the evils of masturbation. “Quit” was used a helluva lot in that lecture by Mr. Olson. My dorm brothers were thinking “Why?”

          So I respectfully beg to differ with you.

  16. I think to prepare for Fundy U you should hire four people whom you neither know nor like to move in with you. If you can, make sure at least one is an overly pious tattle tale.
    This will be the closest recreation you can make of the FU dorm experience.

  17. True stuff!

    1. Didn’t break any major rules until senior year. Didn’t follow “lights out” completely, but I wasn’t much of a night person anyway.
    It was funny though, senior year especially second semester I was -miserable-
    I didn’t care what anybody else did, I’m not the Holy Spirit. I just wanted to graduate and it felt like they were more eager to kick seniors out.
    My best friend told me “LL! It’s because you follow the rules! If you would break some of them you wouldn’t be so miserable!”
    After a while another friend downloaded spotify for me and I listened to all manner of music. And one other friend and I watched V for Vendetta and The Joker Blogs. I really did feel more relaxed afterwards.

    2. Absolutely true.

    3. Didn’t keep a journal unfortunately but I did keep a notebook full of sermon notes (and some of my own comments such as “did not open Bible until here” or “8 verses of Just as I Am” when one speaker came, I kept a rally of how many times he said “Amen” I think it was 14?
    Anyway, if I want to prove how crazy it was I just have to pull that out. Some of the things I was taught about God…

    4. I was never able to find a place. Our dorm was small and by the end of the semester I always felt suffocated and slightly claustrophobic. I think it would have been better if I’d had a car. I seldom left campus.

    5. I flew under the radar. My teachers liked/knew me but I was involved in 0 activities/leadership. I didn’t want to be noticed. Being noticed would just cause problems. I never went to student life, always got my “good girl letter” invisibility seemed to be the best way to go. Even if I was noticed as a “good kid” there would be more and more pressure to be better and better and I knew I wouldn’t be able to measure up.

    6. Graduation day, I think I took 3 pictures. Then I changed out of my regalia and left. I was so done. Soo soo done.

    2. They don’t want to kick out freshmen if they can help it because they are the cash cows. Also, they are more moldable than broken seniors who are only going to leave the sacred halls soon anyway.

  18. Dear Darrell:

    I love number 1. It doesn’t help that it coincides closely with what for me functions like a life motto: ‘every day, some act, however small, to challenge everything.’

    Christian Socialist

  19. #2 is so, so true. Even if they appear to completely lack a conscience, as one of my roommates did, they will find some opportunity to serve you up. In my case, my conscience-lacking roommate was caught with a mutual friend’s missing wallet and some clothing and other items that had been stolen from girls in our prayer group. When she was caught, she turned me in for having a backpack full of forbidden CDs.

    We ended up with exactly the same punishment. When I asked how that could possibly be appropriate since one of us had actually committed a crime I was told that since all the property had been returned it wasn’t really a crime but a disciplinary matter.

  20. Eccl. 7:16 Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise why destroy yourself?

    Biblical unrighteousness. The verse that fundies ignore. Basically they ignore the whole book.

  21. I’ve really enjoyed and have learned a lot in the past few weeks reading this blog. I went to a conservative christian high school. Even though they used KJV officially for tests but NIV /NASV ect was ok to have in class. Girls could wear pants . (Shorts for soccer, basketball and volleyball) Guys just had to wear ties on chapel day or on a game day. The administration never pushed PCC or Bob Jones but we did have reps (from different schools) come to talk to us.
    I never realized how lucky I was to be in a non legalistic but Christian environment. I almost went to PCC because of the cheap tuition but ended up at a state school. Dodged a bullet there! I dated a girl who was a PCC grad and had worked in their administration. … the stories (incidents) she told were insane. Those places really mess with young minds.

    1. “I never realized how lucky I was to be in a non legalistic but Christian environment”

      Good for you!

      Most here at SFL have not been so fortunate…This is their story.

      1. The only time we had to use KJV was for memorizing verses. But most of the teachers taught out of the NASV. Some classes were through a Link satellite system via Bob Jones. Those were the more uptight classes.

        We played some IFB schools in soccer and basketball. One school “asked”the guys to wear ties and girls to wear skirts as we watched…. AND WE WERE THE HOME TEAM.

    3. Is it true that if you attend PCC/Bob Jones their curriculum is the same textbooks used in the Christian school?

      3. Yep. Is it any wonder I completed every exercise in my freshman grammar and math books by week 2 of the semester? Then I was asked to tutor in grammar class, and penalized for not taking notes in math class.
        And the history I hated in high school, I hated again in college!

    4. “I never realized how lucky I was to be in a non legalistic but Christian environment.”

      You really were.

  22. Pretty good list.

    1. I was Mr Straightlaced for my first two semesters at BJU. Then during summer school (required for my major) I somehow managed to anger the dorm sup (it’s a long story), who gave me 50 demerits for “disobedience to a directive” and that was pretty much the end of my caring about the rules. I received my demerits the same day I received my “Good Boy” 0 demerit letter in the mail. I had one of those early WinCE PDAs and a tiny pair of earbuds and I would listen to music after lights out.

    2. I saw people get in trouble time after time for failing to heed this rule. I knew a guy who actually let someone take pictures of one of his stunts, and wouldn’t you know it, somehow Uncle Tony got ahold of those pictures, and somehow, my buddy was the only person in any of the pictures who was identifiable.

    3. I didn’t keep a journal.

    4. I was lucky enough to work as a student operator at the BJU Cogen plant while I was a student, a job that very few students are even aware exists and even fewer have actually held. I think the kitchen staff guy who dropped off my meals and the one really amicable Public Safety guy were the only other students I met while on the job. I figured out that the Hall Leaders could only write you up if the found you in the dorm; if you were out of the dorm but not where you were supposed to be, they had no idea. I remember crashing at Cogen a couple of times during Gold Rush Week when, as an introvert, I was already exhausted from my normal 18 credit workload and would rather have jammed toothpicks under my fingernails than attend a high-energy “rally.”

    5. After my 50 demerit debacle, I found that I was pretty good at flying under the radar. My APC my Junior year talked to Uncle Tony during some event, and Uncle Tony said he’d never heard of me, which I took to be a good sign, and somehow Mr. Daulton as the assistant DOM thought I was a pretty swell guy apparently.

    6. I got out after 3 years with an Associate Degree. I wish I’d have left sooner.

    1. I wonder if we were in the same program, since I also have a three-year degree and required summer school.

  23. An acquaintance kept a journal in which she wrote at some point about making out with her boyfriend in one of the buildings. A roommate of hers read it, turned her in, and she and the boyfriend were kicked out. The admin added a hall monitor right outside that room in addition to a large mirror in the corner of the classroom so that the monitor could see if anyone was in there.

    1. I am very much a fan of leaving no written proof any “law” breaking. That being said, keeping an e-journal either anonymously (blog) or in a password protected file could work out better, just to avoid the snooping roomie/admin problem.

  24. I also spent a lot of time in that stairwell staring towards the Waffle House sign.

    2. When the lights of the Waffle House beckon freedom, you know it’s not a pleasant place I suppose. Cheers to all of you who made it through this experience.

      1. Arch Radish was nice enough to take me to a Waffle House for the first time when I was in the States earlier this year. I must say, I enjoyed the food, but then we don’t have anything like it here. I just had to try and ignore the mess in the open kitchen…

        1. I like Waffle House. There is a Waffle House in the South Atlanta area that at one time had a one-armed cook. I realize that sounds like a joke, but I saw the guy.

          I have made my pilgrimage to the site of the original one. The last time I was there it was empty, the Chinese restaurant in it having closed. The original has since been refurbished and turned into a museum, but it isn’t open consistently, and I haven’t had a chance to stop by there and see it since then.
          Waffle House #1000 is across the street from the original.

        2. I’m sure the food is good! It’s just a restaurant that we don’t have up here in Frostbite Falls or anywhere else in the upper midwest. I noticed in my travels down south most towns of any size had a Waffle House and a Huddle House. I just remembered the signs from my bus trips, we always joked about getting the bus to stop at Waffle House!

        4. Not only do most towns have a Waffle House, many have multiple. It is also common to see one on each side of the interstate at an exit. Sometimes, two or three exits in a row.

        5. I attend church with one of the founders of Waffle House – the nicest man you’ll ever meet. Uncle Wilver – where is the original one? In Norcross? Somewhere like that, right?

        6. R. Gypsy;
          The original is in Avondale Estates. Technically, it is between Avondale and Decatur, but they claim to be in Avondale.

          On a side note and digression: On N. Decatur Rd, 6 minutes north of Avondale is a burger joint in a old Pizza Hut building, called Cozy Burger Town. We found it accidentally, and now try to eat there whenever we have business in the area.

        7. I hit the submit button before I finished. I was going to recommend the Cozy Burger if you get to that area.

  25. These rules would also help keep the sanity of staffers financially trapped in church/missions/Christian school work, especially number 6.

    Eventually, after waking up to the reality of the situation, you just need to rip off the band aid and leave fundyland. Even if it is scary and hurts a bit, it’s healthier than leaving it to fester and eat away at you.

  26. All of those things are so very true. So very true.

    One of the wonderful things about being in the speech department was access to the CA practice rooms (eg empty classrooms in the evening). I am completely certain that my hours there practicing performances of literature I loved, alone and in otherwise silence, preserved my sanity. That was my best escape, even as a grad student.

  27. 1. I was a pretty good rule-follower most of the time. Until my last year. My favorite story is of the time my roommate and I were headed to the dining hall on Saturday morning wearing t-shirts, long denim skirts, and faux Birkenstocks, sans socks. We got stopped half-way across campus by an RA who told us to go back and put on socks.
    4. Our dorm had a fenced area on the roof where girls could sunbathe without being seen. At night, it was my refuge, especially in the winter.
    5. I don’t know. I started out as the ultimate goody-two-shoes, and was well-liked by the professors and administration. I was like a poster child for the fundies. In my last couple of years, when my beliefs began to shift rather dramatically, I kept up outward appearances so no one knew. That’s why I think it is so funny that I ended up as a runner-up for Miss TTU! If they had only known….
    6. Five years. Plus summer classes. Two good things came out of it: I got a genuine, bona fide teaching license (they were accredited at the time), and I met my husband (who is also no longer fundy).

    1. I met my wife working in the dining hall my second semester at TTU. At the end of my second year, Dr. Nichols suggested I quit wasting their time and my money, so we parted company. (TTU and I parted. The wife and I are in our 31st year of marriage) I really wasn’t mature enough for college. When I went back to school a few years later, I found that if you show up for class and take notes, you are a lot more likely to learn something and pass classes.

      I was definitely not a rule follower there. I was counseled about my music a couple of times. We also were alleged to have ignored a few of the dating regulations, but since other parties might have been involved, I’ll not admit to anything incriminating. Since we were never caught by the proper authorities, it never officially happened.

      Then there was the demerits for setting off fireworks in the dorm during summer school. Some folks blow things a bit out of proportion……………………………

    2. Miss (desmond) TTU,

      Are you saying that the school you went to was accredited at one time, and then later one became unaccredited?

      2. I think she’s saying that because she was there for five years it was accredited by the time she graduated. Whereas if she’d taken less time she would have missed out.

      3. They were accredited the whole time I was there. As I understand it, shortly after I graduated they lost their accreditation. Sorry for the confusion. The “two good things” were from the whole Fundy U experience, not just the fifth year.

  28. Ok, so this is off-topic. Reading these posts is such a trip down memory lane, and people have some great advice for our younger sisters and brothers in FU.

    I remember the dorm meetings where the dorm sup gathered all the guys together. It seems his name was Craig Olson, but not sure. He really solemnly talked to us about the terrible sin of masturbation while the monitors looked at us with great concern. We knew then that the dorm sup and monitors were pure and had never engaged in that particular sin unto death.

    For some reason now, that memory is funny as hell.

      1. Now there’s a word picture I’ll need another margarita to help me forget.

      2. “….palm meets face.”

        After BJg’s wonderful story about masturbation, my palm did not meet my face. 🙂

        1. I noticed the hairy orangutan palms on our pilot, I thought it was from gripping the stick for many hours on end.

  29. At the end of my second to last semester at BJU, a friend and I went to lunch one day. This was a day of required meetings and services, and the punishment for deliberately missing one was, if memory serves, 50 demerits (I may be off. It has been 25 years). After lunch, we went to a couple of pawn shops and a tool store or two. Somewhere during the afternoon, we decided to blow off an awards ceremony. We both lived off campus, and decided we could afford the demerits.
    Discipline committee was required if you were on the list, but it was the week of finals, and only met once. I looked at the long line, and decided I would add the 10 Ds for failure to show. I then went to Barge (the hospital) and took my wife and brand new baby girl home.
    I went by the office of the dean of men to find out how much damage had been done. I told why I was there, and the secretary looked at my file and told me that since I had such a good record, they assumed it was accidental, so only gave me 15 for missing the meeting and 5 for missing DC.

    Who was I to tell them otherwise?

    1. There’s such a disconnect to me between you being married, having a child, and receiving demerits. It’s like an adult being put in the corner in an office.

      1. Yes, it’s like the cherry on the fail sundae. Not only were you expected to attend this and that and the other thing while your wife had just had a baby(?!), but you got demerits like a naughty 12-year-old playing hooky.

        1. To this day I regret my husband’s only being (grudgingly) allowed to take off one day from his work in the PCC print shop when our first child was born. If I’d understood the law then like I do now, I might have insisted that he turn in FMLA paperwork and get a few days off, but I don’t think FMLA would have gotten him excused from classes and anyway it didn’t seem worth fighting for at the time. He took 3 weeks to help me when our second child was born and his secular employer was great about it.

  30. Perhaps #7 would be to read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning so prisoners (students) in these institutions might realize that there is still meaning in all forms of existence, even the most sordid ones, and thus a reason to continue living. Of course a book like this would clearly be contraband so it at least accomplishes point #1.

    1. Reading 1984 from George Orwell is also a good suggestion. Sometimes it seems like the training manual for starting a Bible “Kawledge”
      ;D

  31. I ALWAYS obeyed all the rules at my fundy u at all times. I felt that it was important to my education to abide by the stipulations set forth by my elders……

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

  33. I went to Multnomah in the early 80s. Although nowhere near as crazy as PCC, I did find some of the rules rather strange-no movies, but everyone off campus had a TV so they could watch them on their VCR; weekly room checks for which we were written up for things like wrinkled bedspreads; and a dress code that did not take into account the high slits in some girls’ skirts. The one I never did get was the dorm mom that kept getting after me about getting to class after I went down to her office to tell her that my grandmother had died and I would be leaving campus for the weekend. Her response was to snap at me to get to class. It was all about the rules in her case. I basically blew her off and went back to my room to cry. I was in no shape to go to any class! I give Multnomah much credit for their current community standards that make sense and stay away from petty rules.

  34. When I was at BJU I was not allowed to go to a movie theater. I could, however, rent movies for $.79 or three movies for $1.49 at Phar-Mor any time I wanted to watch at home. I made a decision not to go to the movie theater while I was a student there, but I certainly took advantage of the movie rental deals.

    My opinion is and was if movies are wrong, they are wrong wherever you watch them. But since I didn’t have a problem with movies, I went along with the letter of the law.

    The week before we moved to Greenville for school, one of my brothers rode along with me when I went to take care of our housing. On the way home, we watched Alien at the theater on Wade Hampton just down the road from BJ.

    1. There is a perfectly good reason why we were prohibited from going to the “movie house” but could rent videos to watch at home…The videos were sanctified as they passed through the Netflix/Blockbuster (R.I.P.) scanners.

      …so now you know.

    2. I knew a fundy who wouldn’t go to the movies but would watch movies on dvd.

      It was so that they could hit ‘mute’ any time secular music came on.

      2. How many “Narcs” were at PCC & BJU? You know the kids who spied on people to see if they broke the rules.

  35. I broke very few rules at PCC. There really was no rule about not sliding down the banisters of Bradley dorm. Or about not splashing in puddles up to your knees.
    I was miserable the whole time I was there, in part because my undiagnosed depression was labeled as “sin” and “self-absorption,” and in part because there was almost no time or place for interacting with nature; everything was paved, vacuumed, and off-limits — even the ants I tried to feed. I used to climb to the top of Dixon stair tower to look over the tops of the trees and pretend I could see mountains.
    I had more freedom growing up in a muslim country than I had at PCC.

    1. So you’re why they made those rules … now people know whom to hate. 😉

      1. You’re welcome. I would hate to see other young folk being led astray by the shining slidiness of the banisters of temptation. Or by the schlurpy muddiness of the puddles of darkness.

      2. Oh, I think there’s also now a rule about not climbing down the center of the stairwells, handrail to handrail. Sorry about that!

        1. I have a kid, who fortunately for FU admins and their minions everywhere, is too damned rebellious to even consider the tamest of fundy higher propaganda facilities. Said urchin would be single-handedly responsible for adding an inch of thickness to the school official rule book. Not to mention 100 unofficial, unwritten rules.

      3. I believe there are at least 2 rules at my fundy U which can be directly traced to “incidents” involving me and several other members of my crime family.

    2. To the fundies, depression is sin. Maybe unforgiveness that’s unconfessed…Hmmm? We’ll find some other reason to blame you, little Missy.

      Or could it be that some of us just need an SSRI because of a genetic gift from our parents. I get so damn tired of those ignorant fundamentalist a$$holes who think they know more than doctors about this stuff. Oh, and they know more than paleontologists about earth’s origins. (Sorry, your remark about depression brought back memories, and made me shudder.)

      Most Fundy Menogawd are self proclaimed experts who don’t know a damn thing about a damn thing.

      1. Well, I’m sure mine was because of demon possession. I don’t know how many times I was prayed over to cast out the demons of depression. Funny how medication seems to keep demons at bay. I wonder if Jesus knew about pills.

      2. Ever post on the Fighting Fundamental Forum? They defend the likes of Hyles/Schaap etc so don’t you dare make light of anything. Plus I’ve noticed they bad mouth this site over there as well.

        2. Yes, that a true Fundy website for sure. Tom Vineyard was recently accused for sexual harassment, half the church left because The Elder Vineyard didn’t put his foot down. You can read all about it on their site.

      3. As one with the genetic gift I appreciate your comments. I was at some of my lowest points in life when I was 21yo at Bob Jones…and I didn’t even know what depression was. In regards to origins of the earth…what will young earth creationists do when/if irrefutable evidence is revealed indicating that the earth is perhaps just a wee bit older than 6,000 years? They don’t seem to question science about other aspects of humanity. the Ken Hamm types baffle me in their fanatical grip to the young-earth theory. The older I get, the more I realize what I was taught as absolute dogma was not really so much…

  36. Regarding point #1: any time you’re in an environment where maintaining your individuality requires rule breaking, you need to get out of that environment ASAP.

    Having said that, I’d re-phrase it to something like this: don’t obsess over keeping minor rules. Is it “illegal” to listen to rock music on your car radio? Who cares. Keeping your sanity is more important than keeping such a minor rule.

    There’s no action in life that is without sin. You can drive yourself into inactivity and depression trying to chart a perfect course, and that inaction is itself a sin. You gotta live your best and rest on the mercy of Christ (if you’re Christian). Sometimes that means breaking a human rule.

    2. I don’t really dig that kind of song– I fit every label in the song title. 🙂 Well, as far as Christian and Republican, I’m “-ish.” To me it’s just meanness from the opposite direction.

      1. Uh, yeah. It is a bit mean.

        But then, we liberals get all sorts of abuse from conservatives. Even on this blog (though it is usually from the occasional visitors). So turning things around can be a bit of fun.

        But don’t worry. I think you are probably far less conservative than you think you are. Your comments are reasonable, rational, and kind. I appreciate reading what you write. And I am glad to have met you here.

  38. If you go to PCC, you’ll have 99 problems and a gal in britches ain’t one! There’s some of that A Beka phonics skills payin’ off!

      1. They’ll teach you in IFB Kawledge where a diploma is uncredited but can get you a job at Chick-Fil-A in Tennessee.

  39. “1. Break a small rule every day. …. A smidgen of rebellion establishes that you are your own person …”

    Yup. Which is why, had I been in the Garden with Adam and Eve, would have beaten them both to the Tree of Knowledge. No snake needed.

    Isn’t it interesting that all the Laws and the Rules and such essentially work out to forbidding knowledge? Keep ’em ignorant and they will obey you. It was an Old Testament principle which kept the Israelites on the low end of social, scientific, technological, and cultural progress. They wound up imitating the worst parts of the other nations because they didn’t have a basis of learning on their own. They were definitely NOT creators in any sense of the word.

    Who created music? According to the Bible, it was the descendants of Cain, not the “righteous” line of Seth. Who studied astronomy? The Babylonians. Who developed the best farming practices? Egypt. Who developed metallurgy? Not the Israelites! The Philistines were far ahead. No Israelite went to sea like the Phoenicians. No Israelite could tackle engineering ideas like the Sidonians — which is why Solomon outsourced the design and building of the Temple that bore his name.

    With the single exception of the Scriptures, the Israelites contributed nothing notable or lasting to world culture.

    I wonder what notable or lasting contribution BJU and PCC will have contributed to how we think or the way we live.

  40. Fortunately, my entrance to BJU was as an older student. I didn’t spend more than three semesters in the dorms. I got married after my sophomore year, and continued on as a married student — which got me out of a lot of stuff.

    But there *was* the time I chased my date down the sidewalk after Christmas Vespers. And the time I lent my truck to someone (a married student) while I was still in the dorms caused some confusion (and hilarity when it was all said and done). The Dean of Men thought I was leaving campus all night and not coming back till morning! Nothing else of any real note, though.

  41. I think I was the cause of some worry and a source of fear with a group of girls. I was in their room for reasons I don’t remember and saw a rather racy romance novel on their shelf. I knew this because my cousin (not a student) had a copy of the same book. I don’t remember much about it as I never ‘read’ the book but merely leafed through but saw enough to know what it was. I drew attention to it with a casual remark and they were flustered and said it belonged to another roommate that wasn’t there. I had no interest in reporting it in so I dismissed it. I wondered after that if they hurriedly threw the book away or spent the next week worrying and sweating it out that I might turn them in. Looking back that was probably their one little bit of rebellion that kept them sane.
    And if you are out there reading this…sorry if I caused you any anxiety! (oh…and and if anyone cares the graphic scenes were between a husband and wife. One of those silly stories about an arranged marriage where the man and woman are attracted to one another to fight against their growing love for reasons I don’t remember…..bleah)

    1. Religion: Some guy or guys claim God told them to tell you that you are going to hell unless you (whatever the system is).

  44. “I used to climb to the very top of the stairs and stare at the Waffle House sign across the highway”

    Mmm, waffles.

  45. Why would anyone not want to simply skip Steps 1 – 5 and go directly to Step 6 (get out as soon as you can or to make it simple, just don’t get in to begin with)? I mean anyone who has been raised in an IFB church has got to know what and IFB college will be like.

  46. I recommend reading of one man’s experience at an IFBx Bible College in Texas in a series of stories called Tales From the Temple. IMHO the beliefs and attitudes reflected in this James Spurgeon’s tale are pretty common in such colleges.

    These stories were later expanded upon and published in a book called Texas Baptist Crucible.

    http://web.archive.org/web/20050214081156/http://holycall.com/jspurgeon/tales/TFTT1.HTM#top

    http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2091361.The_Texas_Baptist_Crucible

  47. I laughed out loud reading this post. Hilarious and true! I managed to get through a single year at BJU by the skin of my teeth. After the first two months I was already “socialed” and “campused”, with 149 demerits, and yeah you got kicked out at 150. I couldn’t leave the campus for any reason, and wasn’t allowed to speak to girls, sit next to them, breathe the same air as them, etc… And all those demerits were racked up by my roommates and other people in the dorm ratting me out for stupid things no less. It was 4 separate instances. And of course I had to attend weekly spiritual counseling with the head of the dorm whee I was beaten over the head with garbage about how all music is sin except hymns and classical, and how I could be a great example to everyone in the dorm if I would just buckle down and follow the rules. The guy took my freakin George Winston piano cd and smashed it because according to him it was sinfully New Age! It’s freakin piano music for crying out loud!!!!! But don’t worry. I got back at each and every person who ratted on me or gave me a hard time in ways that could never be proven by BJU, and the revenge was EPIC. Its pretty funny how I have more crazy and funny stories from that single year of my life then like all the others put together. I can’t believe I actually didn’t get kicked out like two of my roommates did. If there was a rule in that 3 inch thick student hand book, we broke it. hahaha

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