Standards

We would like to apply some adequate measurement to the meaning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  The evangelical view tries for that standard in reverting always to Scripture for resolutions of controversy.  The Catholic Church adds Church tradition to Scripture in the primary belief that authority rests in apostolic succession extending from the Apostle Peter.  The liberal groupings interpret Christianity with additional factors like cultural change, interpretations of passages based on felt current needs or circumstances, perhaps better addressed, they believe, in an eclectic and emerging culture rather than historical meaning.  From a distance, I have followed various strains from the time I was ten years old.  I was pulled in various directions, depending upon the accents of the family or group to which I felt attached.  My mother was a daughter of the Methodist Church, and asked me to go with her when she restarted church attendance during my high school years.  I did for a couple of years, but it wasn’t the church pattern she knew as a child.  She seemed unclear about a faith life context that had meant so much to her in her youth.  I did attend a little chapel for some months pastored by an evangelical layman.  I dropped it as I developed a neutral faith that did not reflect any consistent insight or ongoing experience.  The chapel did make an impact on my view of deliberate faith in Christ, but I muted it.  My first close friend was Lutheran by parentage, the next held no faith, the next was Catholic and we courted Catholic sisters.  They were sincere Catholics but did not carry their beliefs over to me.  I had a Jewish friend who seemed not to relate his culture to a personal faith.  Seeking a date with a fellow student at West High School in Akron, Ohio in the middle of my senior year, I was inspired in attending her church committed to the Christian Gospel and world missions.  I committed my life and faith to Christ and have not doubted that experience in the eighty years since that date.  Within a few hours I knew that my future would be related professionally in some form of Church ministry, and have been privileged to double in both Christian higher education and pastoral ministry.  The accent has been in Christian higher education on the collegiate level, as student, professor, and administrator. 

The Christian colleges in the evangelical tradition with which I have had meaningful relationships number ten or so.  Others have gained attention for the sake of objectivity related to forming my interpretation of both secular and Christian orientations for life and education.  It is acknowledged that many colleges are related to denominational bodies, but whose orientations are dominantly secular to the degree that the student is virtually untouched for life by the religious views of the sponsoring body.  Gradually even the government is challenging some institutions taking the benefits of the separation of religion and state, but serving with little benefit to the sponsoring religious entity.  The evangelical presumes to qualify for the interpretations on the basis of biblical orientation that presumes a personal God, an authority taken as superior to the state as interpreted by the state, and permitted in a free but generally secular society.

A strong belief that grew in maturing my Christian life related to inspiration of Scripture.  I became intrigued by the miracle of revelation to some persons whose writings through a number of centuries were joined to advance the development of the story of human redemption from God in the person of Jesus Christ.  The first Christians witnessed the gospel from the writings of the Old Testament.  The tension between the priests of Israel and the Christians claiming the same Scripture texts is more troublesome to my mind than the conflicts with humanists about religion and the meaning of Scripture.  It is interesting that the first Christian generation preached the gospel from the Old Testament.  For example, in the duty to offer listeners a need for the redemptive gospel to gain personal acceptance with God, the evangelist might go to Psalm 130 to establish depravity and need for the redemptive story of the Messiah to follow.  The psalmist asserted the point of depravity, a condition from which the individual needs rescue.  The passage argues that human beings are iniquitous, unable to stand alone spiritually.  Out of this need the person calls to God, and presumes that God hears what is said and acts.  Forgiveness is offered and given – (Isaiah).