(Tim, w/thanks to Andy) Readers may have noted my mention of Grand Rapids in the post on False Shepherd Rob Bell. It was purposeful. When a community committed to confessing the most Biblical doctrine turns its back on God's Word in as flagrant a way as the Christian Reformed Church has turned her back on the Creation order of sexuality, God's future judgment will be as severe as His past blessing. To whom much is given, much shall be required.
For clear signs of that judgment, watch the present history of both the mother country, Holland, and the mother institution of the CRC here in these United States, Calvin College and Seminary.
For instance, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that Calvin's schoolmen are all in a huff over their trustees forbidding the promotion of sodomy and sodomite marriage by Calvin's faculty members. So Faculty Senate (thanks for the correction, Sue) members took a vote...
and announced their rebellion by the clear majority of 36 in favor, 4 against. In other words, 36 Faculty Senate members think the trustee action barring their faculty from promoting sodomy is an infringement on their academic freedom, and only 4 think the trustees' action is OK.
Check out the comments under another Chronicle news item on Calvin's controversy, particularly this from sabbybabyboy:
As an alumnus of Gordon College, a conservative evangelical Protestant institution in Massachusetts, we went through similar controversies a generation ago over the prospect of Roman Catholic professors! It takes courage to stand up against trustees and an entrenched college administration. I applaud those faculty members at Calvin who are stretching the meaning and practice of academic freedom at their institution. Perhaps change is possible, over time, even at Calvin College; then too, only with a struggle!
Sabbybabyboy is referring to the firing of Elisabeth Elliot's brother, Tom Howard, from his faculty position at Gordon College following his conversion to the Roman Catholic heresy. Readers interested in the justification of Howard's release written by Gordon's Faculty Senate may find it down the page a bit in this post.
We wait expectantly for Covenant College schoolmen to issue prophetic condemnations, clear notes from their bugles, against their corrupt colleagues at their sister institution.
So what's to be done? Well, I'm no expert in these things, but I've read enough history to know poverty is a wonderful institutional cleansing agent. Right now, poverty is Covenant's glory and riches Wheaton's and Calvin's shame.
Observing the accumulation of wealth in Wheaton and Grand Rapids during my lifetime, I'm reminded of Luther's observation:"So our Lord God commonly gives riches to those gross asses to whom He vouchsafes nothing else."
