Church Voices

My senior year is slowly coming to an end. As I begin to reflect upon my high school career, memories of failure and frustration quickly surface. But as I stay with the thought, it seems not all of my high school experience can be written off as a negative. Today my English teacher, whom I’ve commented on before (not so generously, I regret to say), returned an essay I had written for class. My essay was a summary of Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism and Victor Reppert’s contemporary revival of the argument from reason; and so, being an atheist, I was interested in seeing her response. Her having explained to me that my essay would demand more attention, I waited patiently a few days past the date on which the class received theirs, half expecting a rebuttal of some sort. But much to my surprise, she wrote the following:

Chad, I really don’t know what feedback to give you but “wow!” I do have to admit I got a little lost, but I find it so wonderful that your reasons were researched and not just based on the Bible. You have shown me this year that just because people are Christians, [that] doesn’t make them blind to a broader view on issues. Thanks.

I must confess, my use of apologetics in that classroom throughout the year could have been unnecessarily astute; but it seems to me that despite rejecting Christ for whatever other reason, I’ve at least done my part in making sure there’s no intellectual excuse. This isn’t meant to be self-promotion. The point is that after getting that from a teacher who I thought found me and my essays a drag is a solid reminder that God uses us even when we think we’ve botched it up for good. This is the very heart of the gospel. With that, no matter how bad I think my high school experience has been, it has been worth it.