Doctor Bob and the Three Shipwrecks

[shereads]

Bob Jones University in South Carolina was briefly in the spotlight when candidate GWB chose it as the site of a speech during the 2000 primaries. For those not familiar with BJU (that is what they call themselves; get your minds out of the gutter, pornographers!) it is a Christian college to the same extent that the ocean is damp.

(It is not true that BJU forbids interracial dating; students just need the permission of an irresponsible parent who fails to recognize the dangers of race pollution.)

Inspired by Al Franken, I went to the BJU website and read this cautionary tale for parents who are considering other colleges for their children.

Written by the school's founder, "Three Shipwrecks" demonstrates that even Christian colleges can be infiltrated by secular influences sufficient to cause your kid to "get a gun and blow out his brains."



Parents beware.

~ ~ ~

edited for length

Three College Shipwrecks

by Dr. Bob Jones Sr., D.D., LL.D. (1883-1968)

Founder of Bob Jones University

If you will read the story of three college shipwrecks and will keep in mind that as an evangelist I have had many such experiences, you will understand why I felt it was my duty and took upon myself years ago, when I was in the prime of life, the heavy burden of founding Bob Jones University.

I have met many young people who went away from Christian homes to colleges and universities and came back not only with their faith shattered but sometimes with their morals wrecked.

The spiritual lives of many young people are being sacrificed on the altar of what men call academic freedom.

Three College Shipwrecks
I. His Only Daughter

I spoke to a great Southern audience. I pictured the atheistic drift in the educational life of America. A man sat on the front seat and followed my every word with an expression of agony I have rarely seen on a human face.

When the service was over, his pastor said to me, "Did you see that man who looked like the incarnation of agony? He is a member of my church. He is one of the truest Christians I have ever known. He is on my board. He had one daughter. She was a beautiful child. She grew up in the Sunday School and church. She finished high school.

"He sent her off to a certain college. At the end of nine months, she came home with her faith shattered. She laughed at God and the old-time religion. She broke the hearts of her father and mother. They wept over her. They prayed over her. It availed nothing. At last they chided her. She rushed upstairs, stood in front of a mirror, took a gun, and blew out her brains."

II. The Pride Of His Mother

I was conducting a revival campaign in the shadow of one of the great universities in a northern city. One night I dismissed the crowd and started downtown. A young fellow followed me down the street. I noticed that the young man was crying; so I put my arm around him and took him up to my room in the hotel.

He told me this story: "Mr. Jones, I am a boy; but when I came to this school, I was pure as the purest girl who ever lived. I entered the dormitory and took my mother's Bible out of the tray of the trunk and laid it on the table.

"The students flocked around me, calling to the other students to come see my Bible. 'We have a country boy come to town, and he has brought a Bible with him!'

"'He will get over that,' someone said.

"'Just give him time. Let him get in biology. The biology prof will fix him. The Bible is all right for country people and for ignorant folks, but we have outgrown that.'

"I paid no attention to them. I read my Bible. I said my prayers. I went to Sunday School and church.

"At last I got in the biology class. You have got to hand it to that teacher. He was a better psychologist than he was a biologist. He dropped doubts in my mind every time I went to class. Little by little he broke down my religious resistance. After a while I lost my faith. I didn't believe in my Bible.

"I hate to tell you this, Mr. Jones, but one night I went out with the boys. I have lived in awful sin. I have gambled away the money that Mother saved. I have gone with wicked women, and my faith is all ruined.

"Today I had a letter from my mother. She will be here tomorrow. I can't see her. I couldn't look at her. She thinks I am pure. She thinks I am the same boy that I was when I left her a few months ago. I couldn't stand to look into her eyes. If I did look at her I couldn't kiss her, for I have an unspeakable disease. I am going downtown in the morning before Mother gets here and buy a gun and blow out my brains.

"If there is a hell, as my mother's Bible says, it isn't any worse than the hell I am in."

III. The Son of An Aged Minister

A feeble old man came down the aisle and took me by the hand. "I would like to speak to you a minute, Brother Bob," said the old man, with trembling voice.

"Brother Bob," he began, "l am an old superannuated minister of the Gospel. After I began my ministry, we preachers said, 'We must build us a church school so we can educate our own children.' My dear, sweet wife made her pledge; and though she wasn't strong physically, she did her own washing and saved the money to give to the school.

"We never had but one child. He was a boy."

The old man's face lighted as he continued, "He was a great boy, bright, clean, obedient, Christian. He graduated from high school with honors. He prayed in public. Everybody said he was an ideal preacher's son.

"The day came when he was to go to college. Wife and I stood on the front step and kissed our darling boy good-by. He looked so manly and clean as he went out the gate; and his shoulders were so broad, and he was so erect. That night Wife and I knelt together by the bed to say our prayers. 'Our Father, we thank Thee that we have a safe place to educate our boy. He is in a Christian school, and we know he will come back to us as good as he was when he left us.' "

Then the old man, straightening up, threw his shoulders back like a soldier on parade; his eyes flashed fire, and he set his jaw. "Brother Bob, while I had been preaching to my country churches, the devil had been sowing tares in the college. A skeptic had got in the Science Department.

At the end of four years my boy came home with his degree; but he came home an atheist, laughing at my religion, at the Gospel I preach, and at the faith of his mother.

"My son is a middle-aged man now; but he is a drunken, atheistic bum."

© 2004 Bob Jones University website

~ ~ ~

If I can speak for Dr. Bob, I don't think he means to make the point that only drunken atheism can save your child from shooting himself.

 

[Guest]

Wow, Sher. This really hit home. I was a needs-based scholarship (i.e., welfare) student at my Catholic high school. Not one nun spoke to me about college, but a 'lay' woman counselor, brought in to help seniors move on, told me I was college material. This was in Detroit which had two Catholic universities. Of course I could not afford tuition to a private U. and did not have the grades for a merit scholarship, so I went to Wayne State in the city, my tuition paid for by my father's VFW benefit. The nuns would have preferred I not go to college if I couldn't go to a Catholic one. They focused on how Wayne State was rife was communists.

They were right. I went to a secular commie school and lost my faith (and my virginity). I even met my first husband there, a Cockney atheist. Later I married a Chinese commie-Marxist, the father of my agnostic sons.

god bless fate, Perdita

 

[shereads]

Wow, Sher. This really hit home. I was a needs-based scholarship (i.e., welfare) student at my Catholic high school. Not one nun spoke to me about college, but a 'lay' woman counselor, brought in to help seniors move on, told me I was college material. This was in Detroit which had two Catholic universities. Of course I could not afford tuition to a private U. and did not have the grades for a merit scholarship, so I went to Wayne State in the city, my tuition paid for by my father's VFW benefit. The nuns would have preferred I not go to college if I couldn't go to a Catholic one. They focused on how Wayne State was rife was communists.

They were right. I went to a secular commie school and lost my faith (and my virginity). I even met my first husband there, a Cockney atheist. Later I married a Chinese commie-Marxist, the father of my agnostic sons.

god bless fate, Perdita

At least you didn't blow out your brains. That's something, anyway.

 

[Guest]

At least you didn't blow out your brains. That's something, anyway.

Well, suicide is a mortal sin for Catholics. I may have lost my faith but being RC is still part of my identity. P.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Biology is the study of living things. Because of the tremendous diversity of life forms, biology is perhaps the broadest of all the scientific disciplines. Individual living things can be studied on various levels ranging from their molecules through their cells, tissues, and organ systems. The biology major aims to provide training which properly captures the breadth of biology while maintaining the necessary depth of preparation needed by graduates who will pursue further specialized training in graduate or professional schools. While most secular biologists are committed to evolution as the basic principle of biology, Bob Jones University trains Christian biologists who see the living world indelibly marked with the fingerprints of a God of limitless wisdom and power.

I wonder if a BJU Christian Biology Major would be able to attend any other school to get his masters? Or would a lack of grounding in evolutionary theory prevent him from being accredited?

-Colly

 

[shereads]

Well, suicide is a mortal sin for Catholics. I may have lost my faith but being RC is still part of my identity. P.

I hate to tell you this, but you and the other Catholics are hell-bound sinners in Dr. Bob's book.

My dad, god bless him, whose politics were somewhat to the right of Reagan's, retired from the Air Force in S.C. and decided to get his Master's Degree so he could teach. BJU had the appropriate politics, so he enrolled there. They were too far gone even for a solid right-wing conservative. As a student, he was responsible for making sure his wife didn't wear shorts or shop in supermarkets where beer was sold. He lasted a semester before he went to a secular university.

There was an unbridgeable void between my dad's right wing, and the religioius right wing: creationism. In part, my dad's social conservatism was based on his observation that yes, we are just stupid enough to be descended from monkeys.

 

[shereads]

Where the Christian right meets neocon politics

This is also from BJU's website. Shades of James Watt.

Ecology, Pollution, and Propaganda

by Charles R. Douglas

{edited for length}

Nowadays, everyone is supposed to be an ecologist. Mention of the word stimulates visions of the spoiled earth and generates dreams of a return to the primeval forest. Suddenly, almost everyone can remember seeing a pile of garbage or a beer can along the roadside. Instead of being a private, individual concern, ecology has become a grand national cause.

The First Earth Day

In September, 1969, Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson suggested that Americans set aside a day for "serious discussion" of environmental problems. Dubbed "Earth Day," the idea spread rapidly to college campuses.

While radicals celebrated the centennial birth of Lenin, young activists displayed their "green" color (although many were "red" inside). Led by the Students for a Democratic Society and other leftist groups, the young "ecologists" dramatized the environmental crisis.

The "serious discussion" suggested by Senator Nelson evolved into lectures by leading environmentalists, politicians, and other concerned persons. Population biologist Paul Erlich spoke at lowa State while Ralph Nader went to New York's State University at Buffalo. Edward Kennedy was slated for Yale and Edmund Muskie for Harvard. Benjamin Spock, Allen Ginsberg, and several rock stars inspired students to "rediscover" the joys of the "natural life."

Muir and the National Forests

Political ecology is a dangerous twisting of the original concept; it is a disguised attack on the rights of private property, industrial development, and individual freedom. A major figure in early political ecology was John Muir, a naturalist who was influential in establishing national forest and park policies. Muir's writings gave support to the socialist politicians of the late nineteenth century, who succeeded in setting aside 220 million acres of land into national forests. The various "conservation acts" removed vast tracts of land from normal development under a free economy and gave them over to control of the government.

The general public unwittingly supported this move, not realizing that trees are a renewable resource.

The media have also played their part in emotionalizing the issue.

Anti-Pollution Legislation

In their nostalgic passion for the primitive life without advanced industrial development, people have forgotten that such a life is far from clean, healthy, or pure. Yet, armed with federal power, the political ecologists still force corporations to comply with their edicts, upsetting normal community activity and shifting social and industrial development into the direction they desire.

The Rights of Individuals

The attack on individual freedom by the political ecologists is even more dangerous than that against property or industry. In March, 1970, Senators George McGovern and Philip Hart proposed a bill which would "empower any person or organization to obtain a court order restraining conduct likely to pollute, impair, or destroy natural resources." Under such auspices, any number of controls could be introduced into the private lives of Americans.

The control envisioned by the political ecologists has spread to the United Nations, which has produced a publication which states: "there is value in the international approach to the study and treatment of environmental and demographic problems." The demographic problem conceived by the United Nations is forced population control, which includes abortion (murder of the unborn) and euthanasia (murder of the aged).

Control is the key to the sudden interest in political ecology. Under the guise of ecology, our entire nation, and even the world, can be controlled. The political ecologist rests on the assumption that local interests cannot cope with the environmental problems of a certain area, but that the effort must be centrally controlled.

The political ecologist has a powerful lobby to effect this control--such groups as the Sierra Club, the National Audubon Society, and GOO (Get Oil Out of the Santa Barbara Channel). Several Long Island lawyers have formed the Environmental Defense Fund to drag offenders into court. With the political ecologist so vocal, Christians must exert the influence of a proper view toward ecology.

The Christian Approach

The Christian ecologist understands the relationships of living things and accepts his responsibility, as a husbandman of God, to utilize God's creation in an efficient manner. The Christian should count himself among those who advocate a temperate approach, based upon sound knowledge, and respect for the property rights of others.

Even though the Christian ecologist endeavors to protect the animals and plants which are God's provision for life on earth, he retains an accurate view of nature. In Genesis 1 we are told that God, Who is in control of all things, established a hierarchy with man dominant over the creatures. Genesis 1 defies the political ecologist, who adheres to the theories of evolution which depict man as a continually evolving creature who can be guided in his development by modification of his environment.

The political ecologist envisions man made happy by the possession of things, including his environment. He wishes to do good for his fellow man, even if force must be used to inculcate his notion of goodness. The Word of God teaches that man is a spiritual and physical creation of God. Man cannot be truly happy until he has made peace with God through Jesus Christ, regardless of his environment.

© Bob Jones University

 

[Guest]

Lordy, lordy, he disses John Muir?! Wonder how he'd criticize Mother Theresa (not that I can't). P.

 

[thenry]

BJU with a student body in the low single thousands is responsible for 5-7% of the White House interns each year.

While cruising their webpages I found a nice one defining seven "scientific heresies" that have poluted the world. My favorite: environmentalism.

edited to add:
Look at that, someone just beat me to it.

 

[Colleen Thomas]

Someone lease, please please, tell me this is a parody site. Pretty please?

-Colly

 

[Colleen Thomas]

thank you Sher, this is a hoot. Even better than Landover cause they mean it.

-Colly

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Although I'm not Christian myself, I grew up with and around christians, and many of my friends are Christians. They're a pretty nice bunch, most of them.

But I'll tell you, every so often Christianity just really creeps me out. You just never know when one of them might take a gun and go upstairs and blow their brains out.

Most Jews just content themselves with whining and being obnoxious.

--Zootberg

 

[cloudy]

I have several nieces and nephews that went/are going to Brigham Young University, and it looks like Sodom and Gomorrah next to that place!

Hard to believe, in this day and age, that a school, much less a university, like that still exists.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

BJU with a student body in the low single thousands is responsible for 5-7% of the White House interns each year.

I assume that these are of the nonhead-giving variety?

Otherwise they might get a gun, go upstairs, and blow their brains out!

---Zoot B. Jones

 

[shereads]

I assume that these are of the nonhead-giving variety?

Otherwise they might get a gun, go upstairs, and blow their brains out!

---Zoot B. Jones

I believe Dr. Bob prefers this phrasing: "blow out their brains."
It may or may not be a biblical directive, but why take chances?

 

[shereads]

thank you Sher, this is a hoot. Even better than Landover cause they mean it.

-Colly

Landover doesn't mean it?

 

[cheerful_deviant]

Any body wana bet that WBJU-FM radio doesn't play rap music?

Seriously, the fact that this place not only still exists, but still has over a thosand students scares the hell out of me.

Another generation of "Compassionate Conservatives", and here I was hoping they would all die out in my lifetime.

 

[Clare Quilty]

This was in Detroit which had two Catholic universities.

I graduated from U of D in 1988.

My mother got her Masters Degree from The Little Red Schoolhouse in the 1950s.

Small world.

 

[Clare Quilty]

Muir and the National Forests

Political ecology is a dangerous twisting of the original concept; it is a disguised attack on the rights of private property, industrial development, and individual freedom. A major figure in early political ecology was John Muir, a naturalist who was influential in establishing national forest and park policies. Muir's writings gave support to the socialist politicians of the late nineteenth century, who succeeded in setting aside 220 million acres of land into national forests.

Am I the only one who finds it telling that an indictment Theodore Roosevelt is conspicuously missing from this anti-conservation diatribe?

 

[Guest]

Small world.

Very. I was born and lived in Detroit until 1970 (24 when I left). My great-grandparents came there as migrant farmworkers then switched to assembly lines.

Now I work at an S.J. univ.

 

[shereads]

Women in the Martial Arts

The Christian Woman in the Martial Arts

by Sharon Walker


Should a Christian woman study self-defense?

{excerpts}


Since the Christian's body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, it is a woman's responsibility to guard her temple, to protect it from defilement. Many Christian young women are not aware of the evil thoughts of the wicked. A self-defense course will teach her to be more aware and to be on guard. She will learn to keep physically fit in order that she might defend herself effectively. She will learn to turn her opponent'sstrength against himself and to act instinctively in a dangerous situation.

One fear of the Christian is that the martial arts are associated with eastern religious or political origins.

The Christian woman does not partake in a session of "mind-cleansing meditation" nor do obeisance to an Oriental leader. She may bow before major events, however, in the same courteous spirit that prompts boxers to touch gloves before a match or tennis players to jump the net afterward.

The only real problem might be for the Oriental Christian or for missionaries in an Oriental country. The eastern culture may deny the Christian this sport in the same manner that the apostle Paul denied himself meat offered to idols. If something is a stumbling block, it is better to deny self than to cause another to sin.

Judo has become a clean sport with rigid rules. But it may still offend some Oriental people. We must listen to the words of the apostle Paul when he says, "But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumbling block to them that are weak. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend" (I Corinthians 8:9, 13).

The question of femininity

Can a woman have a black belt and still be submissive to her husband? Submissiveness or femininity does not have anything to do with a woman's size, build, or athletic ability. These are not judged by her ability to overpower a man.

Femininity is an attitude of mind and body. A physically weak, shrewish woman can be unfeminine by overpowering her husband with a sharp tongue. A strong woman may be very feminine in appearance and soft-spoken in manner.

The unfeminine stances used in the class are not flaunted in public. She does not advertise the fact that she is taking a course in self-defense.

On the other hand, the husband or fiancé may say, "She doesn't need that. I'll protect her." But he is not with her twenty-four hours a day. Whether at a shopping center or at home, she is frequently alone.

As Christians, we have the responsibility to do all we can before we can expect the Lord to help us. "Prevention" is the key word. Revealing clothing or suggestive behavior is an invitation to trouble for any woman. She should dress in a manner that does not call attention to the body, not wearing clothing too scanty, too tight, or too extreme in fashion. The knowledge of self-defense may save her life. But most of the time all she need do is walk away. She may lose her place in line, but she will retain the proper poise of a Christian woman.

 

[shereads]

Some tidbits from BJU's response to the publicity generated by GWB's visit during the 2000 primaries:

Primary Campaign


How do you explain the sudden hatred and bigotry the University is subjected to by the media and the political "three tenors," McCain, Gore, and Bradley, who sing the same off-pitch tune of the liberal left?

Isn't it really a compliment to Bob Jones University that the likes of John McCain, Al Gore, and Bill Bradley seethe and fulminate against us? Would we not be embarrassed if they, with their philosophies, spoke well of us? The great divide is between our biblical world view and their humanistic world view.

Why has Bob Jones University become their whipping boy? Is it because they want to see George W. Bush defeated? Do they want him to look "guilty by association"?

Does the present liberal feeding frenzy on Bob Jones University, a Bible-based Christian institution of higher learning with impeccable and respected academic credentials, reveal a bias toward the people of God who stand unapologetically for the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word? Is it an attempt to marginalize, by caricature, Christians who are out of step with an age that is out of joint?


Interracial Dating and Marriage

Since most people of all races choose to marry within their race, this furor against Bob Jones University seems totally disproportionate. The noise comes from but a strident few with personal agendas.

Does the University believe that those who choose interracial marriage do so out of rebellion against God? No. It does believe, however, that often the promoters of it do so out of antagonism toward God because they are often the same entities that promote homosexuality, abortion, and other forms of social radicalism.

Bob Jones University's policy regarding interracial dating was more of an opposition to the rebellious and defiant antichrist spirit of the promoters of one-worldism than to interracial dating itself. Many who date and marry interracially are just as opposed to one-worldism and the spirit of Antichrist as we are.

Did the University’s dating policy originate to regulate black-white relationships? No. It was first stated in the mid-1950s when dealing with an Asian-Caucasian dating couple.

Catholicism

Does Bob Jones University's stand upon the doctrines of Scripture, which places it at odds with papal edict, justly qualify it to be described as "haters of Catholics"? Absolutely not!

We are, however, under a mandate from the Savior Jesus Christ to "proclaim the Gospel to every creature." This means Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, Mormons, Muslims, Atheists—everybody, including unbelieving and religiously liberal Protestants. Bob Jones University stands opposed to universalism—the religious teaching that all men, regardless of their beliefs, will ultimately arrive in Heaven. Our shame would be in telling people a lie, and thereby letting them go to hell without Christ because we loved their goodwill more than we loved them and their souls.

We do not hate Catholics. If there are those who charge us with being opposed to the doctrines and theology of the Catholic church, we plead guilty. All religion, including Catholicism, which teaches that salvation is by religious works or church dogma is false. Religion that makes the words of its leader, be he Pope or other, equal with the Word of God is false. Sola Scriptura.

We love the practicing Catholic and earnestly desire to see him accept the Christ of the Cross, leave the false system that has enslaved his soul, and enjoy the freedom of sins forgiven that is available for any of us in Christ alone.