I often felt as if I was on the outside looking in, when it came to grasping certain tenets of systematic theology. Truthfully, my eyes often glazed over the way they did in high school trigonometry class.
It must have been a seminary requirement, since I wouldn’t have chosen such a class as an elective, and one with a term-ending final paper. Ten pages, single-spaced, annotated, in which I was to summarize and share my own systematic distillation of the Christ event.
I was hoping just to get a passing grade on this project, but ended up getting a 39 out of 40– which I now realize might have been an arbitrary, tongue-in-cheek way for the instructor to let me know he liked what he read.
The last page contained this grade and a paragraph of commentary from the instructor that included what, in my view, were surprisingly kind and complimentary words. It’s one of the few items I’ve kept from those years at Gettysburg, because it represented an accomplishment, in my mind, and recognition from one of the intellects in this particular field of study.
I was and still am proud of it, even as I’ve grown to question the whole enterprise and would most likely write a very different paper if I had to do it over again, and didn’t care about graduating.
3 Cents' 