Idolatry … and the ark
“I feel that there is this moral high ground in higher education that is just sitting vacant.”
So laments one interviewee in The Hunting Ground, a documentary about the rape epidemic at colleges and universities across the USA.
When I heard that line, I rewound the video and listened to it again.
It seems to me that the moral high ground is indeed vacant. The schools pay lip-service to it, but do they actually dwell there?
One test is: What do they promote more? A self-sacrificing culture, or a self-serving one?
The movie depicts the horror of campus rape. Even more vividly, however, it details the idolatry – that’s the Christian term for it – of big-time higher education. The viewer is subjected to wave upon wave of athletic pageantry, of architectural pomp, of student servility. A poignant initial sequence shows highschoolers reading their acceptance emails, overjoyed to tie themselves to these lofty institutions.
This was my own feeling in 2000 when I was admitted to the University of Notre Dame.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I dodged that bullet. I ended up going to Bethel College, a rather campy school. Not long ago, Bethel’s homepage proudly showed a photo of the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, which a Bethel graduate helped to design.
Noah’s ark, of course, rests upon the highest ground of all.
So laments one interviewee in The Hunting Ground, a documentary about the rape epidemic at colleges and universities across the USA.
When I heard that line, I rewound the video and listened to it again.
It seems to me that the moral high ground is indeed vacant. The schools pay lip-service to it, but do they actually dwell there?
One test is: What do they promote more? A self-sacrificing culture, or a self-serving one?
The movie depicts the horror of campus rape. Even more vividly, however, it details the idolatry – that’s the Christian term for it – of big-time higher education. The viewer is subjected to wave upon wave of athletic pageantry, of architectural pomp, of student servility. A poignant initial sequence shows highschoolers reading their acceptance emails, overjoyed to tie themselves to these lofty institutions.
This was my own feeling in 2000 when I was admitted to the University of Notre Dame.
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
I dodged that bullet. I ended up going to Bethel College, a rather campy school. Not long ago, Bethel’s homepage proudly showed a photo of the Ark Encounter in Kentucky, which a Bethel graduate helped to design.
Noah’s ark, of course, rests upon the highest ground of all.
