The Likely Disciple

I’ve been walking around in a bit of a daze. A few minutes ago, as I write this, I finished reading a book. A book that I am still processing. It’s a make-Esther-stop-and-think kind of book. So what do I do in response?? I write.

Imagine this: a young college journalist from Brown University—the Ivy League school, not “my” JOHN Brown University—decides to spend a semester at Liberty University, a Christian school founded by Jerry Falwell of the Moral Majority. No, the student is not a Christian. He doesn’t believe much of what Liberty University exists to teach. But he goes as an experiment, to see if these conservative evangelicals are as crazy as the secular world thinks they are.

And, like any good journalist, he writes about his experience. The result is the 300-page book (in the Kindle edition) that I finished reading this evening—The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University. My mentor and high school teacher/boss told me about the book and then sent it to me as a gift. Over the past week, in my down-time (sometimes just waiting for something on the Internet to load, or just for the Internet to work again) I dove in.

As I said above, the book made me think. In some ways, that is to be expected. Like the author Kevin Roose, I have practiced journalism. I attended a Christian college. But those are the similarities, not what made me think. What tickled my brain and made me feel the need to do some processing-writing were the differences.

He came at his project as an outsider. He did everything he could to blend in at Liberty because he wanted to get the real flavor there—but he did not naturally buy into any of it. And by the end of the book {SPOILER ALERT}, his experience failed to convince him that he needed to become an evangelical Christian.

If he is the Unlikely Disciple, that makes me a Likely Disciple. Not only did I grow up in a Christian home, I was homeschooled in a conservative Christian home. In all my 23.5 years, I’ve only been outside of the Christian bubble for about nine months—seven months living in China when I was 12 (though the type of community I was part of there makes it hardly count) and two months in a secular study/internship program in Washington, D.C. I attended a Christian college (that was actually less conservative than me), had a second internship with a Christian organization, and now find myself in the African bush with missionaries because God called me here when He shut the doors I had planned on.

So while we have a couple similarities, Kevin and I are worlds apart. What stopped me in my tracks tonight was the fact that he went through all the motions of being a good student at a conservative Christian university—one that was a lot more strict in its rules than where I went! The only thing he admits to getting reprimanded for is falling asleep in the chapel service. He tells about some of the Christian students there who were doing worse than he did during his “study abroad” semester at Liberty University.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that his book made me stop and think about what it is that makes me a Christian, and why it is that I do the things I do. It’s unnerving to think that it was so relatively easy for Kevin’s dorm-mates and class-mates to assume that he was a believer because of where he was and what motions he was going through. No, his book is not making me question my faith or doubt my salvation. But it certainly serves as a reminder that sometimes only God knows the heart, and that no amount of outward good deeds or rule following makes one a child of God.

It was enlightening to read his book because of his outsider-passing-as-insider status. He wrote his tale very well, tailoring it to be accessible to any audience. As he tells of struggling through taking Bible classes and learning the ropes of an evangelical community, he explains things that we Christians just take for granted. He did not naturally approach things with “biblical worldview glasses,” so his book is a chance to see my comfortable environment the way a non-Christian would. He’s honest—sometimes brutally so—about what bothers him; about where his real views clash with the persona he took on for a few months. He doesn’t pull punches, but at the same time he went through the process with a fairly open mind and he came out the other side with a somewhat-revised view of the conservative Christian community.

What I read in that book ranged from convicting to embarrassing to exciting to discouraging. At times, I wanted to cheer as he talked about his dorm-mates who encouraged him spiritually, even when they didn’t know they were witnessing to an unbeliever. In other sections, it bothered me—as it often does—to read a secular opinion of conservative Christian views about homosexuality, creationism, or environmentalism. Those are things that even my Christian college education have made me wrestle with over the past four-to-five years.

Of course, there’s a difference between how I have wrestled with it and how he did. Unlike Kevin, I am convinced of the truth of Christianity. That naturally does not mean that I have everything figured out theologically, or that I always live out/apply what I believe to my daily practice. At the end of the day, our starting points do make a big difference on where we end up on things.

And when I finished the last page of the book, before the swirling thoughts took over my brain, I prayed for Kevin. Because whether he believes it or not—and regardless of the fact that I believe some of his critiques were valid—I know he needs a Savior. We ALL do because we are all sinners. He spent a semester doing all the “right” Christian things. But that’s not going to save him, just as that is not what saves me. Whether unlikely or likely, Christ calls each of us to be His disciple. To follow Him on the path of spiritual transformation—to be conformed to His image. And like it or not, it’s a journey that never ends in this life.