Yo internet surfer people. This is the Head Snipe.

At Dallas Baptist University, the number one priority is image. It's a higher priority than academics, theology, health, comfort, etc. Most important, it's a higher priority than reality. For example, look at the lawn in front of the Mahler. Look how smooth is is; it's so smooth it's shiny; it's so shiny that on Monday mornings sometimes you see girls who are late to class glancing at the lawn in front of the Mahler as do their make-up while they rush to class.

Now turn about forty-five degrees clockwise, so you're facing the newest of our two duck ponds. Walk straight forward. Look at the area near the duck pond, beneath the Strickland building. The lawn is different here, isn't it? The dead grass has trash in it. Or walk to Williams; if the bushes to your right aren't encroaching too badly on the sidewalk, getting in your face, it's probably because I've torn a few of them off with my bare hands while the Grounds Crew's been hanging around in front of the Mahler mowing the Mahler lawn for the third time that week.

This is a metaphor of DBU, and also a great example of the way things are here. The image projected, and the image which it is made a priority to project, is of a great Christian school, one where everyone is happy. What is not as important is the reality of a great Christian school where everyone is happy.

Sure, some of us are happy. I know a lot of people who couldn't be happier with Dr.'s Bell, McCollister, Shelton, Matos, Williams, and so darn many more, plus Professors Kappelman and Mitchell and more. But that's not the point. The point is that the image seems to be more important than the reality to the important people. One thing that bothers me more than almost anything else is the stunted growth of the student populace. Right now I'm talking to a great guy about how we're supposed to put something into the chapel services, not just go to get something out of it. Well, I cannot disagree with that. Still, I wonder why we have the second half of the chapel service if they don't expect us to get anything out of listening to a guy talking to us for twenty minutes.

My friend points out rightly that there is a different speaker every week, so of course there's no building of one message on the other. He's right, but maybe that's the problem. My friend mentions that DBU doesn't seem to be telling them what we need to hear. Sure, sure: it would be bad if one guy preached on I John 1 and a different guy entirely on I John 2.

To which I respond: but what if DBU just informed the chapel speakers that not only are there people here young in the faith, but there are a few tried and true Jesus Freaks who were birthed out of the fire of the passionate worship of Christ in the pagan high schools.

Well, why don't those Jesus Freaks spend their time praying for the rest of us in chapel? To which I respond: firstly, are those old-school Freaks here only to serve? Some of them claim to have come to a Christian university to know God a little better than before themselves. Secondly, isn't it a basic principle of leadership that you teach people at just a little bit higher than their own heads so they have to stretch to learn something? Thirdly, what about the times when so many of those same Freaks have a problem with the chapel speaker's theology?

To the "thirdly" he responds, well then you should pray for the next chapel service. At which I wonder, what are they to pray for? If for the truth to be spoken, then the situation seems dire to some of us, for this seems to happen rarely. My friend says that the Freaks should be praying for something to bless them anyways, even from the least of God's servants, even from the lousiest chapel speakers.

To which I offer no objection. Perhaps the Freaks should be a little humbler and do this a little bit more (it's worth their consideration, at least). Still, I wonder this: couldn't the same thing have been done by Martin Luther? Did he do that? If not, I daresay it was probably his pride, his foolishness, his unconscionable sin. But if he had done only that and never spoken the real truth, even against those who spoke untruth, that would have been, at least, little better than speaking the truth without being willing to learn even from the least of God's servants.