Filed under: life
There is an ongoing issue at Providence that most aren’t aware of, and of those that are, they don’t talk about it. The challenge is merely being a Christian College which facilitates the growth of (mostly) young Christian people while allowing them to create their own opinions about how they should live their lives.
There is a certain model portrayed at Providence College of what a ‘good Christian’ looks like. This image is reinforced in different ways, but I think it is fair to say that the influence of the Student Life department plays the primary role.
The two primary ways I see this is in the student leaders, and community life standards set by that department. The student leaders at providence fit into a very specific mold – these are people who seem to have it ‘all together’, who don’t smoke, drink, touch drugs, have sex, use profane language, eat with their mouth open, or say the wrong thing at the wrong time. This has the image of perfection, pure-as-white with no really big problems. I personally know most of the students currently in leadership roles at the school, and I know that perfect is the last word to describe them, but still they still seem to fit into this image.
The other rienforcer of this limited mold of Christianity is the community life covenant which is presented as scripturally based and therefore as the way things should be. I don’t have the time here or, more importantly, the effort to comb through the covenant, but I trust you can find it through the Providence link on this blog. With these criteria, the definition of a good Christian becomes very firm and solid. This is in no way the way God created us to be. We are immeasurably unique, and so is our Christianity.
Through my experience with the Faculty at Providence, I have observed (and they have affirmed) the idea that what Student Life department implies as spiritual maturity is not what they advocate. I’m still unclear about what they consider to be a ‘good Christian’ but I get the impression that they don’t have a solid definition. In light of the uniqueness of God’s creation (us), I believe this is a more accurate idea to hold rather than trying to force ourselves into our ‘perfect’ molds.
I must admit that I am a student leader. Too many, if not most, I appear to fit into that mold. There was a time when I tried to fit my big, awkward, unacceptable parts into the ‘good Christian’ mold, but I’ve since realized that isn’t possible. Even still I sometimes feel the pressure to ‘tow the line’ of the image of perfect leadership in public. If you are or have been a student leader, or a student who has been lead, then please share your thoughts, opinions, objections, and offensives.
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