The Veritas Conflict (15 page)

Teresa leaned back in her chair, raising her hands slightly in defense. “Look, I’m just trying to help.”

“I’m sorry. I know. Keep going.”

“All I was going to do was pass along the advice they gave me. They warned that no matter how ready I thought I was intellectually and academically to take a Harvard religion class, to avoid them like the plague until I was also
emotionally
ready. They can apparently be really challenging, especially for younger people like us who aren’t as mature in our faith yet, or who don’t know how to handle the whole ‘tolerance’ thing. I would imagine that advice would be doubled for someone taking a class like this as a freshman.”

Claire noticed that her voice carried no admiration for the bold attempt Claire was making. Finishing her fries, she grabbed her backpack and stood up.

“Thanks, Teresa. I appreciate your telling me about all that. I guess I’ll go find out what this class session holds and see what I think. By the way, are you going to be at the Harvard Christian Fellowship meeting tonight?”

“Wouldn’t miss it. I’ll see you.”

Claire hurried toward class and tried to put her conversation with Teresa out of her mind. There was no way she was going to be a quitter on such a prestigious opportunity. What on earth did Teresa mean, anyway, saying she might not be able to handle the class emotionally?

The demon hurrying along above her prodded and poked at Claire with his long fingers, making a suggestion that he knew would fall on open ears.

Claire thought of something.
You know, I’ll bet Teresa just isn’t used to religion classes. Maybe she’s just a little jealous of Christians who know the Bible better than she does. I should have been nicer to her. Maybe I can help her along with that stuff sometime
. Her irritation gone, Claire bounced up the stairs to the imposing Andover Hall.

Seated in a large circle of desks and chairs with twenty other students, Claire listened to her religion TA, Jack DuBois, introduce himself. She had seen him in class on Wednesday, but this was the first meeting of his class section. He was immaculately dressed in black pants, gray long-sleeved shirt, and charcoal tie, setting him apart from the jeans and T-shirts in the circle with him.

He was a student at the divinity school, he said, only a few months away from receiving his Ph.D. He had taken some time off in the middle of his graduate program and traveled, visiting such famous spiritual sites as the Buddhist monasteries in Nepal, the Dome of the Rock in Israel, and the Vatican in Rome. He did a lot of research and writing for the Global Religions Institute at the div school, and had been the TA for Professor Misha Dubrovsky’s Bible Writings and Interpretations class for the past three years.

At the Wednesday class session, Claire had spoken briefly with Professor Dubrovsky—a middle-aged man with a thick Russian accent—letting him assess whether this upstan freshman was ready for his class. She had apparently answered his questions to his satisfaction, for he had signed the registrar’s slip without fuss and gestured for her to take a seat.

As the class discussion had progressed that day, Claire had been able to make no sense of what the stern-faced professor personally believed. Looking back, she recalled her vague unease when he let several clearly biased student statements pass without comment or balance from another point of view.

She had also been annoyed when several students referred to the “father/mother God” or the “universal cosmic Christ.” Two women in the large class actually referred to the “mother goddess.” Claire’s fertile imagination had wandered for a moment as she pictured a lightning bolt slashing through the classroom and shooting the women across the room. She had elected not to mention that part of the class to Ms. Tabor-Brown, when her program officer congratulated her on the graduate-level course.

Sitting in class now, Claire tried to push her vague uneasiness aside. Jack DuBois was going over his expectations, reading from some notes in front of him.

“As the TA for your section, I will be the primary interface between you and Misha. I’ll give you my home phone number for emergencies, but I prefer that you contact me during my regular office hours. I will grade all your papers and will be the main person assessing your readiness for class, your class participation, and so on.”

Jack looked over the top of his glasses at the students. “If you want a good assessment of your class discussions, papers, and tests, I strongly suggest that you abide by Misha’s class codes handed out at the first class and always remember that we work from the assumption of an analytical, level playing field for all viewpoints. Going from past experience, that may be a sticking point for some of you.”

He looked around at the twenty students arrayed in front of him. “Any questions? Good; then why don’t we go around and have each of you briefly state your name and major so that we all know who we are. We’re going to get to know each other very well in this little section over the next few months.”

There were a lot of religion and philosophy majors. When her turn came, Claire said she was considering biology and history but wasn’t sure of her major yet.

Jack had been scribbling notes on his class roster, but looked up swiftly. “You don’t know your major yet?”

“Uh, no. I’m a freshman. I’ve had all the prerequisites in high school or at the community college where I took some classes, so Professor Dubrovsky thought he’d let me try it.” For some reason she didn’t add that she went to a Christian high school.

Jack nodded and gestured to the next person. When they were all through he picked up the book they’d been assigned, St. Augustine’s
Confessions
, then glanced around the circle. “Well, let’s begin. Although Augustine is billed as a landmark thinker and the
Confessions
as a groundbreaking book in the Christian religion, in actuality Augustine is simply articulating the existing fourth-century belief structure about Christianity and the Bible. For example, he views the Bible as God’s literal word’ to creation, to be used for guidance on everything from large theological points to minor details of life. This was a common belief system for several centuries, especially among the poor and poorly educated masses, right up until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when scientists began questioning that assumption.”

Claire kept her head down as she scribbled notes. For the second time that hour, she began to feel uneasy and unsettled. What was Jack getting at?

He had opened the book. “Okay, let’s pin down a few references in the
Confessions
that clearly mirror—rather than transform—a classic fourth-century worldview of the Hebrew Bible.” As the students began reaching for their copies of the paperback, he paused and raised one hand.

“Before taking examples let’s make sure we’re all on the same page for this study. Is there anyone here who believes that the Bible is the inspired word of God?”

Claire looked up and raised her hand. All heads turned her way, and the room grew quiet.

For just a moment Claire felt a strange sense of panic. No other hands were raised, and the looks on the other students’ faces ranged from astonishment to pity, as if she’d said she had been kidnapped by a UFO or believed the earth was flat. A few students looked down at their desks. One caught her eye and gave a quick warning shake of his head.

Jack leaned back in his chair. “Well, then.” He glanced at the student roster, a small smile playing on his lips. “Um … Claire. Why don’t you clarify what you take that to mean, just so that there is no misunderstanding here?”

Claire could feel her face growing hot. “Well, I just think that—well—the Bible is what you said. You know—God’s inspired Word to the world.”

“Defend that statement.”

“What do you mean, ‘defend that statement’? Defend my personal beliefs?”

“Yes. This is an analytical class, and any statements of personal belief—especially when they fall outside the norm—must be defended intellectually in order to be considered relevant for class discussion. So, Claire, defend your statement that the Bible is the inspired word of God.”

Claire took a deep breath, trying to organize her thoughts. “I just know it is. It’s so obvious.” She grappled vainly for the apologetics pointers she’d heard in high school. “I mean, the Bible is so relevant to everyday life, how else can you explain it?

“Try again.

“Look, what do you want me to say? I’m just coming from different assumptions, and I can’t defend them from the outside like you want me to. I
start
by believing that it’s true and go from there.”

“Claire, in this day and age no one can credibly base their theology on the Bible. If that’s where you’re coming from, you’d better be able to think and discuss your theology systematically.” Jack directed his attention to the rest of the class. “Well, let’s not take too much time with this discussion. I’m sure we’ll work through this issue eventually In the meantime, let’s move on with Augustine’s
Confessions.”

He pointed at a woman in a red ethnic-patterned outfit. “You in the red—um, Molly—please provide for us an example of where St. Augustine lays out a classic fourth-century Christian belief system in his writing.”

The class swirled around her as Claire sat still and silent. Humiliated and angry, she tried to act pleasant on the surface. She even screwed up her courage to comment on a point in the
Confessions
that she knew backward and forward. But most of the discussion went right over her reeling head.

At the end of class Jack passed back the short papers the students had written on
Augustine. As he walked around the room distributing the essays, he commented on their merit or lack thereof. “Several of you did not appear to have read Augustine’s
Confessions
at all. Your low grades reflect my antipathy toward those who do not do their reading assignments. On the other hand, several of you who
did
do the reading clearly did not read the class codes and were marked way down because of it. Those grades can be pulled up by rewriting your assignment. In general, the first paper of the year is always a bit shaky. If you want to discuss your grade or writing technique, please stop by during office hours.”

Jack walked in front of Claire’s desk and placed her paper facedown on top of her notebook. He handed out the final two papers, then glanced at his watch. “That’s it for today. See you Monday.”

Claire stared at the paper in front of her. This would be her first grade of any kind at college, and with the way the day had already gone … She turned the paper over.

A big F was circled in red. Claire’s stomach lurched. She began taking short, shallow breaths as she read the TAs red pen comments.

Writing is rambling rather than concise. Reread
Harbrace College Handbook
for a refresher
.

Did not properly lay out your thesis, so your support arguments carried little weight
.

Captured Augustines mindset well. Good overview was diminished by your unfocused conclusion
.

She hadn’t even read the
Harbrace College Handbook.
She wouldn’t get to that until the second semester freshman writing class.

Intrinsic quality of paper was a C–. Downgraded to F for inadherence to class code of “level playing field for all viewpoints.”

Under the TA’s last comment Claire noticed a few arrows pointing to red circles around words in her paper. Her eyes followed an arrow to a sentence in her second paragraph: “In keeping with Augustine’s personal conversion history, the
Confessions
clearly outlines God’s control yet His giving of free will to man.”

She read the small handwritten insert and gasped aloud. The word
His
had been circled in red and
/Her
added. Her eyes flew down the first page, then the next. Everywhere Claire had referred to God as
He
, Jack had changed it to read
He/She
.

Claire flew out of her seat, catching the TA as he stepped into the hallway. She tried to step squarely in front of him. “You failed me on this paper because I referred to God as
Her
” She held up the offending document, her body tense and quivering.

Jack turned toward her with an air of resignation. “Oh, that was you? Hmm, I hadn’t put that together before now. Look, Claire—” Jack set his satchel down and took the paper from her hand—”you consistently used the old paternalistic pronoun for God. We stressed in the first class that we have to provide a level playing field for
all viewpoints, and the only way to do that is to recognize that students hold God to be many different things. The class codes clearly state that student papers, in keeping with that standard, have to accommodate the broadest possible terminology.”

“First of all, Jack, I wasn’t in the first class—”

“Well, we can certainly work out a rewrite.”

“And second, that totally goes against the personal convictions of a Bible-believing Christian! How can I refer to God as He/She when Jesus Himself referred to God as Father?”

Jack sighed, as if talking to a slow child. “Claire, you’re using the Bible as a standard for theology again. That is totally backward from the analytical approach this class must take.”

Claire started to say something, but Jack stopped her.

“Look, if you have a problem with this policy, take it up with Misha. Maybe he interprets his class standards more loosely than I do; I don’t know. But until I hear otherwise from him, these are the only rules that will allow for a free-flowing, intellectual debate that is unimpeded by personal bias.”

Jack picked up his satchel. “Sorry, Claire.” He shrugged his shoulders and walked away down the hall.

Claire gathered her things in a blur and walked toward her dorm and up the stairs to her hallway. Was it possible she had actually
failed
her very first assignment because she didn’t—and wouldn’t—refer to God as She?

And the way all those students had looked at her … Groaning, she propelled herself into her room and onto her bed. Her face was hot with humiliation and anger, and tears leaked onto her pillows.