Thoughts at the Two Month Point and Dealing with my Southern Baptist Past

 

“I shall remember the deeds of the Lord; Surely I will remember the wonders of old.”

                                         Psalm 77:11

 

It in November 1st and I have been studying at the graduate school level in Princeton New Jersey for exactly two months. Being on the east coast, thousands of miles from home has not been without its fair share of challenges. Some of these challenges have been on the smaller size such as the fact that I was allergic to something in the air here in Central New Jersey for my first three weeks and had to perpetually carry around tissues to dab at my watery eyes.

On a good note, my allergic flare up unexpectedly stopped towards the end of September Another personal issue I have been facing is the fact that I do not own a car anymore. Yes, I had to sell the “Brown Bomber,” my 1992 model Honda Accord with 274,000 miles on it. My lack of not have owning a car is making life interesting here in Princeton, because the various bus systems this region has to offer are not as reliable as I would have expected in a cosmopolitan area like this and they also can be very expensive to take. I got a full time job at a grocery store, which is a major blessing, but now owning a car has made things interesting getting back and forth to work.

I am in graduate school at now, and the work load and degree of difficulty of my courses far outweighs my undergraduate course work. All my professors are major academic scholars and I am very encouraged by their level of academic excellence. While, I am keeping up and getting things turned in, I have not been as fully engaged with my academics as I need to and I have decided to really step it up and dedicated myself anew to doing well here.

I have made a lot of new friends here in New Jersey. While initially I was making friends with my new classmates almost exclusively, I have branched out and made some acquaintances and friends at my new job and at various other places and junctures around the Princeton area such as several bus drivers. In making new friends back east, I realize now that I am far more socially liberal than I thought and have made friends from the gay, lesbian and transgender community here.

All my classmates and professors at my new school have been great and I am enormously blessed to be here. This place has already changed and challenged me in so many ways.

My biggest challenge by far has been what to do with my past and very bad experience as an undergrad student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. While I have moved on from the wacky and oppressive fundamentalism of SWBTS geographically, I obviously have not moved on emotionally. My real issue is dealing with the repressive fundamentalism I encountered and lived through from 2008-2014. I cannot underestimate my great displeasure and disappointment with the Southern Baptist Convention and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

I am very much trapped in my bitter Baptist past and my white hot bitterness over my experience in Texas is robbing my joy and memories of the good times and great friends I made while studying and working in North Texas. I made a lot of friends outside of campus, in Fort Worth whom I have not thanked because of my severe anger over my experiences at SWBTS. To those friends, know that I love you and will never forget you and the good times I had eating BBQ and hanging out watching the TCU Horn Frog football team. I miss the many friends I made in Texas and I have not properly acknowledged that in giving my account of my time in Texas.

I have also not properly addressed and made allusion to my many friends in Southern California nor my childhood in Michigan. I want to honor my friends and family as well.

While time for me to move on from my fundamentalist Baptist past has almost come, I need to let it go in a realistic manner. I think having this blog has been both good and bad for me. I am writing a book about my experiences and observations of SWBTS and the Southern Baptist Convention and that has been therapeutic.

I am still jarred and reeling from spending over six years of my life in a militantly fundamentalist and Southern Baptist environment. I think I have a case of PPP-TS (Post Paige Patterson Trauma Syndrome), and while I am trying to let those dark years I experienced at SWBTS, I do an injustice to the years and experienced while I was there. I believe it is both appropriate and healthy for me to address my horrific experiences in the fundamentalist Southern Baptist culture in a realistic manner.

Yet my experiences at SWBTS do not define me. The opponents I made in the myopic Southern Baptist Convention do not define me either. I will define myself on my own terms and in my own way. I also know that there is a far more to life than blogging and relating my horrible experience in fundamentalism to the outside world.

As for me, some men like myself aren't looking for anything logical, like money. We can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn...