I came to the end of my freshman year of college with a great sense of want. I’d had fun, but didn’t feel different. Didn’t feel some overwhelming sense of change. In fact, I just felt more afraid of the real world. I was certain when I’d arrived on my first day that I was going to be an actor. In fact, I’d declared by age 25 I would be in Los Angeles, working in movies or television. On day one, I opened my first acting text book and it said “if you plan on making a living as an actor, you will fail.”
Despite how many plays I did and the acting classes I was taking, I couldn’t shake that sentence. I couldn’t do anything else. I wasn’t even interested in doing much else. If that text book prophecy were true, I was fucked. On top of this worry, I’d screwed the pooch academically. I started the semester well enough. I think I at least passed my mid-terms, but the moment the snow melted and the sun appeared my mind completely checked out. I still did well in my theatre classes. I think I only earned a C in my Auditioning course, but that was because I procrastinated until the night before to learn my damn monologues. That and I missed a lot of class. Even though he was pissed that Kristiana and I wouldn’t do A Doll’s House for everyone, Lane gave me a decent grade all things considered.
Ironically, there was one class that I excelled in, and it had nothing to with the theater. Well, maybe that’s not so accurate. My favorite course, in fact my favorite of my two year college career was of all things, Introduction to the Old Testament. I never skipped once, and it was an early morning class! I loved it. The class was always interesting, always informative, and strangely enough very entertaining. The reason was simple. The professor, an incredible educator, a dynamic orator, and literally one of the genuinely nicest men I’ve ever met. He was truly what you should expect when you think of someone who embodies Christ-like living. His name was Dr. Bob.
I won’t even make up a name for him. Dr. Bob was the shit. He was probably 5’ 9” tops, had jet black hair that looked only a little like that spray-on hair stuff, and he sported a Charlie Chaplin moustache (I’m trying to avoid calling it a Hitler ‘stache, but let’s be honest . . . ) that looked like a felt strip smudged across his lip. He was perpetually tanned and had a penchant for Cosby sweaters. The man loved life. It was rare to ever see him without a happy grin, showing off ivory Chicklet-like choppers. And it wasn’t the stupid grin of the unstable, nor was it forced. He really seemed to live in the moment, and appreciate every little positive thing he saw.
Dr. Bob, affectionately known as D.B. was actually a Euphegenia alum. He’d received his Bachelor’s there in the late Sixties and gone on to Seminary. He’d been the Chaplain for the Chicago White Sox, as well as the Minnesota Twins. I knew him simply as Dr. Bob, my Old Testament professor. He was also the Vice President of Student Development. That last title seemed to be the one he took to heart most. I have never met an educator so concerned for his students. And by his students, that isn’t limited to those in his classes or even whose names he actually knew. D.B. seemed to care sincerely about every student in that school. In questions of discipline or rule infractions, he seemed to always side with the student charged. He thrust himself into student activities, always encouraging, always helping in anyway he could.
Dr. Bob stood apart from every other professor and administrator at that school. It was apparent from the attitudes the other “grown ups” held toward him. The school board, the tenured Profs, administration, all held thinly veiled contempt for Bob and his love for the student body. I can’t speak as to the current situation, but from1993 through 1995, that school was run by old white men. The ones raised on that old time religion. Hence the reason dancing, like in Footloose, was outlawed on campus, among a host of other so-called sins. Students were to be treated like cattle, to be ushered through the system with their heads down towing the line. If any got out of line from the American Baptist Standards for Education, they were to be zapped with a cattle prod. The old men wanted us to behave ourselves, pay our bills, and get out in four years, only to be heard from again when we sent our annual Alumni donations.
D.B. didn’t share that attitude. He was a preacher and Evangelist who believed in fostering free thought and using modern media to inspire new ideas. He saw potential in every student. Even ones the majority would look at and say “that’s a lost cause.” He got excited by discussion in his classes, which were technically meant to be lecture sessions. He would have a stereo playing in the room before class and openly welcomed song selections from students. His only requirement was noprofanity. Bob liked to be surprised and hear music he didn’t know. When a song clicked with him, you’d see it in his eyes and he’d go on about it for ten minutes. I remember one particular morning a student brought a copy of the Styx song “Show Me the Way.” For those old enough to remember the early-90’s comeback track from Dennis DeYoung, it was dramatic and melodic. Not like the acid rockers they were initially famous for in the 1970’s, but more melodic and commercial than “domo arigato Mr. Roboto!” This smacked of DeYoung’s theatrical aspirations, as he was probably already working on his failed attempt at a Hunchback of Notre Dame musical at the time. Yes, I know way more about Dennis DeYoung than I should, but I chalk that up to the fact that he’s a living legend where I reside. The first line of the song went: “Every night I say a prayer, in the hopes that there’s a heaven.”
Dr. Bob heard that I could immediately see he was in. He wanted to ride this song out and see where it went. By the end of the chorus, he was just grinning. We had to listen to that song every morning for the next week. And I could just picture D.B. sitting at his desk in his office, sporting a blue wool sweater with knitted snowflakes and green pines listening to it over and over again. He really analyzed things and looked for messages, or at least analogies he could pull out. I even remember one morning watching a scene from Jaws in class as a visual aid to his lesson that day. And it made sense! I loved his O.T. class. Dr. Bob should have been teaching Art History or just plain old History, or English Lit. Actually he should have run the Humanities department. He was dynamic, and philosophical, and fascinating, and he was insanely intelligent yet still very much intuitive. His were some of the largest classes on campus due to demand, but also because he was just damned good. He got through to his students. All of his students, no matter their education level, their background, it didn’t matter. There was another, much older, much more old-school Prof on campus who taught the Bible as well. I took his New Testament class and he moved us from a class room to his office there were so few of us. Dr. Bob’s class had been full, as usual.
Dr. Bob was the teacher you wanted to impress, simply because he was so impressive. Admittedly, his assignments weren’t that involved and his exams were pretty easy. Still, I wanted to be a shining star in his class. When it came time for us to write a term paper I really wanted to wow him. Calling the assignment a college-level paper is a bit of a joke. It was simply a reaction paper. He told us to pick our favorite Old Testament passage and write a paper, basically an essay, as to why it meant so much to us. I was certain most of the students would pick some verse foreshadowing the coming Messiah and allude to how grateful they were for the gift of their salvation. Best case, somebody might have loved The Ten Commandments a bit too much as a kid and would pull Moses parting the Red Sea from Exodus.
The guy had been teaching this for a long time. I was certain he’d seen it all. Probably had a paper based on every cliché verse in the book. I was going to present him a fresh perspective, on a verse he’d never expect, and it wasn’t that hard to come up with. As I mentioned before, I am a dinosaur nut. This also happened to be around the year that the first Jurassic Park movie was released. So I went to my go-to passage when talking dinosaurs to other Christians. Believe it or not, there are “educated Christians” who don’t believe dinosaurs existed. They ignorantly lump them in with Evolutionary theory and Darwin. I won’t kick over that can of prehistoric worms (and see if the fittest worms survive.) I’ll simply say whether you believe Adam and Eve were fully formed from mud and a rib, or that man evolved from primordial goo, it has nothing to do with the fact (scientific & Biblical) that giant creatures once roamed this rock. The night before the paper was due, I went to work at the computer lab, and whipped out the best paper work I could come up with in an hour and change. My inspiration, the Old Testament’s Book of Job, Chapter 40: Verses 15 – 24.
“Look at Behemoth, which I made along with you and which feeds on grass like an ox. What strength it has in its loins, what power in the muscles of its belly! Its tail sways like a cedar; the sinews of its thighs are close-knit. Its bones are tubes of bronze, its limbs like rods of iron. It ranks first among the works of God, yet its Maker can approach it with his sword. The hills bring it their produce, and all the wild animals play nearby.
Under the lotus plants it lies, hidden among the reeds in the marsh. The lotuses conceal it in their shadow; the poplars by the stream surround it. A raging river does not alarm it; it is secure, though the Jordan should surge against its mouth.
Can anyone capture it by the eyes, or trap it and pierce its nose?”
So no, I didn’t really go for something deep, or philosophical or prophetic. I was never really moved by promises of mansions and treasures stored up in Heaven. What always moved me was the life-sized diorama at the Milwaukee County Museum of a T-Rex taking down a Triceratops. What made spiritual chills run up and down my limbs was when those giant doors opened up on EPCOT Center’s Universe of Energy and there was that family of Brachiosaurus looking down on our little ride vehicle, grunting, snorting and chewing on swamp grass. That to me was a religious revelation. It was Job 40 come to life. That passage in my mind, and in many other minds can only be describing one creature, a sauropod dinosaur. A Brachiosaurus or maybe an Apatosaurus. Bottom line, it’s a big son-of-a-bitch with a long tail and a long neck. That sure as hell doesn’t describe an elephant or even a hippopotamus as some “Bible scholars” have even attempted to dismiss.
Again, a great hypocrisy unveiled. In my youth I heard extremely conservative Christians openly decry the existence of dinosaurs because they ignorantly lump them under the umbrella of Darwin and evolutionary theory. If you know anything about Evangelical Christians, and quite honestly it drips all the way down to Catholicism, evolution is a four-letter word. I don’t really voice an opinion on the subject. I cannot believe in something from nothing. But I also don’t believe in a literal 7 day creation, or that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, or that God literally formed two people and from them came we all. Especially when the Bible itself quotes Cain, their son pleading with God after murdering his brother not to cast him out of Eden because “whoever finds me out there will kill me.” Um, if there are only 4 people in the whole world and you just clipped one of them, who would be out there?
The way I see, I’m far more concerned about where we are headed, then where we came from. Besides, I’m pretty sure aliens engineered us anyway. Just kidding. Regardless, to deny the physical evidence of countless species of beasts roaming the Earth before we ever stepped foot, or slimy protoplasmic flipper on the sand is just vanity. And ignorance. Not that I’m always against ignorance. I once got into an argument with a Paleontology Grad student because I casually mentioned that I believe it is possible man and at least some species of dino probably did coexist. Is that based on any fact? Of course not. Honestly, I just like the notion. But Job is the oldest book of the Bible, having been dated further back even than Genesis, even though it takes place after – and somebody is describing a dinosaur (and later a literal description of a fire-breathing dragon . . . but let’s not open that can of mythological reptilian worms!) It was definitely written long before the first recorded discovery of dinosaur bones. So, explain that. I’ll wait. I will simply say I do believe that all legend and mythology has some basis in reality. If not, it just makes the world a much less interesting place.
I decided I would convey my love for dinosaurs and my fascination that at least one is actually featured in the Bible in my paper. In most collegiate classes writing a paper entitled “A Boy and His Dinosaur” would be a balls move. In reality, it could be academic suicide. But I took the chance. And it paid off. Even now as I’m staring at the discolored pages, that big fat blue A is well preserved. I’m honest enough to admit right here the whole thing is a lot of crap, but he liked it. It is extremely creative crap.
The beauty of taking Religion courses in college is you can get away with a bit more creativity. That’s not a compliment nor should it be a selling point. To put it another way, as long as you’re representing the popular opinion of the institution, you can more or less pull anything out of your ass without too many footnotes! It should be a red flag if you want to better yourself by actually learning and preparing yourself for the real world. Not only did I write a paper with zero facts or sources, aside from the Bible, and I actually included a few points that were based on pure conjecture. In fact, some of it was based wholly on myth and fairy tales. But I stated them as straight-up facts and there wasn’t even a question mark scribbled on the page. In the body of the paper I mused as to why God would have created the dinosaurs and then kill them all. Again, as I never let the facts stand in the way of a good story, I recalled stories I’d read in a children’s book called Dinosaurs and the Bible or something to that effect. It had a beautiful illustration of an armored herbivore called Ankylosaurus harnessed to a Chinese Emperor’s chariot.
So I posed the question that perhaps God took the dinosaurs away due to our abuse of them, as we do so many other species. I know, I know, but I was 18 and recently lost my dog. That’s where I cited this dino-abuse such as these poor enslaved Ankylosaurus yoked to some dictator’s transportation. I also alluded to the tales of knights of old being sent out to slay “dragons.” Dragons people! He didn’t even question. I suspect he didn’t care. He found it entertaining. I wrapped it up discussing my own love for dinosaurs and how they’d be a catalyst for many father & son bonding trips to the museum as a kid. I think that’s what got D.B. the most. In fact, at the end of the paper, under the A, he wrote the following:
“I was deeply moved by this paper. There is both a creativity & profundity here that is too rare in student writing. Thanks for the unique thoughts & depth of expression.”
It’s kind of hard not to love a guy who lavishes that kind of praise and encouragement. Especially when you’re 18 years old and feel like what little faith you desperately cling to is slipping away on a daily basis. Any legitimate academic criticism aside, the man understood the fragile nature of young people on that cusp between youth and adulthood. It’s terrifying. Anyone who tells you they knew their first year of college not only what they would do, but what they were doing period is a dickhead. You spend a great part of your days just wandering around worrying, and hoping nobody finds you out. And now picture going through this in a setting where there are religious leaders telling you unchecked emotion is weakness, confusion is lack of faith, and those hormonal urges, which by now are raging like a firestorm will actually get your ass pitched into a lake of fire. Dr. Bob wasn’t like that. The man was the living definition of the word supportive.
I often viewed my faith as walking on a glass floor. I could see below the glass was nothing but a black void, but as long as the floor held I had nothing to fear. At the time I began taking Dr. Bob’s Old Testament course, I was already beginning to question the integrity of the glass. In fact, I was certain I’d seen a hairline crack or two just near where I was about to step. After his class ended, summoning the conclusion of my first year at college, the glass seemed somehow stronger again. Those cracks now looked more like just a few imperfections in the pane, but nothing to worry too much about. Maybe things were going to be okay.
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