JESUS AND PLU'S MISSION

PLU is presently considering a revision of its Mission Statement, and a public discussion of the proposed revision will be held Thursday afternoon at 4 o'clock. The proposed revision deliberately avoids making any commitment to Jesus Christ, and that issue must be addressed.

At a previous public discussion, I pointed out that the draft of the revision then being proposed contained not even the name of Jesus Christ. In a way which can only be characterized as cynical, Jesus' name was mentioned in the next draft. It appears only in the last sentence, which reads: "The university is committed to enlivening and sharpening constructive dialogue between an increasingly complex world and the community of the Church that confesses that life's ultimate meaning and hope are expressed in Jesus Christ." There is in this sentence no commitment to Jesus at all, any more than there is a commitment to the "complex world" or to anything else with which the university has "dialogue" (as a kind of middle-man?). There is, indeed, a commitment to dialogue with the world and the church (and, I would assume, the government and the mosque, etc.), but such commitment to dialogue certainly implies no commitment to the beliefs of the world or church or anything else.

In contrast, PLU's present Statement of Objectives says that the University believes that "all truth is God's truth," and it contains the following paragraph:

This paragraph is a truly beautiful expression of the unifying vision of PLU, and there is nothing remotely like it in the revised proposal.

I want to demonstrate that such a commitment to faith in Jesus Christ is right, is necessary, and is practical for PLU.

A COMMITMENT TO JESUS IS RIGHT

An argument that is too often brought up against the confession of Christ in the Mission Statement is that such a statement of faith is improper in an organization's mission statement, since an organization cannot have faith. Such an argument, however, is simply preposterous.

A mission statement is precisely where an organization expresses its faith in a variety of things. It says that it believes that certain things are valuable and good, that certain things are true. Witness a couple of the more extreme statements of faith in the proposed revision: "The university empowers its students for lives of ... care--for other persons...." and "The university is grounded in the liberal arts, which awaken the mind from ignorance and prejudice...." Does the university really give all its students the power to care about others? Do all people who study the liberal arts become free of ignorance and prejudice? The reason that I point out such statements here is not that they are incredible. Rather, it is because such statements are statements of belief, of faith. The university believes that the liberal arts (properly taught?) can help free a mind from ignorance and prejudice--believes it in spite of the evidence that many students of the liberal arts have not been so freed.

Perhaps a belief more sacred even to many academics is the belief in the goodness of diversity. The proposed revision has a whole paragraph on the value of diversity, claiming, for example, that diversity "opens the heart." Let us for a moment examine the concept of diversity. It presumes that all individuals are of equal value and therefore that differences in individuals do not cause them to be of less value; rather, differences are part of what makes an individual valuable. Notice that the belief that all individuals are of equal value is a faith position. Not all people have believed that. There are even some notable thinkers who have opposed that belief with carefully constructed alternative views of reality. Nietzsche, for example, would not believe that the less-evolved herd of humanity was equal in value to the more-evolved "superman." The equal worth of people, and the concept of diversity, are faith positions.

Organizations cannot avoid taking faith positions if they are to have any unifying vision at all--and if they are not, then there is no point to mission statements. Nor is there any reason why such faith positions should not be "religious." "Non-religious" faith positions (whatever that means) certainly have no higher standing than religious faith positions.

Of course, organizations take faith positions, and of course those positions can be religious--no one doubts the right of the Church to have a faith position or creed, even if the creed is no more than "Jesus is Lord." Such a faith position by an organization does not require that everyone in the organization actually believe it--for example, not everyone in a church believes its creed. Rather, the organization expects everyone in it to be unopposed to that position and expects its leaders to encourage everyone in the organization to freely adopt that position as his or her own personal belief.

Should a university take the faith position that Jesus is Lord? The fact that it is a "religious" faith position does not exclude it as a candidate, as we have seen. All faith positions, whatever they may be called, should be evaluated on the basis of their own truthfulness and usefulness. Let us do that with the confession of Christ.

Surely a university believes that the search for truth is important. But the search is meaningless if there is no truth, since there would be nothing to find. If, as the present Statement of Objectives says, "all truth is God's truth," then the search for God is crucial to the search for truth. A distorted notion of God could distort many, perhaps all, of our notions about truth. If, as the present Statement of Objectives says, "the ultimate meaning and purposes of human life are to be discovered in the person and work of Jesus Christ," then the search for meaning must begin with Jesus. If, as the Scriptures say, Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him, then the confession of Jesus is indispensable to the search for truth which is found in God. The confession of Jesus is indispensable to the mission of the university.

Of course, whether the university chooses to confess Christ depends upon whether it believes in the search for truth, whether it believes that all truth is God's truth, and whether it believes that Jesus is the Son of God who perfectly reveals God. If it believes those things, then it is right and highly desirable that it make such clear statements in its Mission Statement. If it does not believe such things, then it is certainly not right that it include such statements. That brings me to my second point.

A COMMITMENT TO JESUS IS NECESSARY

Let us for a moment assume that the university does NOT believe that Jesus is the only completely true Son of God, and therefore that, in the search for truth, He is dispensable (or, more politely, "optional"). Then, as I have said before, it is necessary for the university to honestly and openly acknowledge its lack of faith in Jesus. The reason why this must be done is that many have the mistaken impression that this university does have some commitment to Christ, and it is immoral to attract students or praise or money under false pretenses.

If the university does not have faith in Jesus, then it must not in any way pretend that Christian faith is of any special importance to it. It is inappropriate to have Christian chaplains or space set aside on the campus for Christian worship or time set aside for Christian worship. It is inappropriate to require religion courses as opposed to philosophy courses. It is most inappropriate to open the academic year "in the Name of Jesus." It will certainly be necessary to amend the Articles of Incorporation, which read in Article II as follows:

It will be equally necessary to change the name of the university, since "Lutheran" suggests "Christian" to most potential students and their parents--and would constitute false advertising if the university had no commitment to Christ and the faith of Luther. (Any true commitment to that faith would surely be proclaimed in the Mission Statement.)

To pretend to hold something as important when you do not hold it important is hypocrisy, as I said at the last public discussion of this matter. To pretend that Christ is important to us (with a veneer of Christianity) when He is not (as demonstrated in our Mission Statement) is hypocrisy. Most of us condemned Jimmy Swaggart as a hypocrite. But which is the greater hypocrite? A person who wants to be Christian but is lured into repeated sin by the urges of his flesh, or a university which does not want to be Christian but pretends to be for the sake of increased tuition money?

For the sake of honor PLU must be honest about what it believes and must act consistently with what it believes. Honor has little standing in today's world, but I ask that PLU be honorable. Indeed, I will believe, until proven otherwise, that the people who work at PLU are honorable. If I can assume this, then the following statements from the faculty constitution give me some comfort:

If I can assume that the present faculty of PLU are honorable, and are thus in complete support of the present Statement of Objectives of the university, then I cannot understand from whence comes this pressure to change the Statement of Objectives nor why there is such opposition to confessing Christ with the same vigor that the present Statement of Objectives confesses Him.

But what if the worst is true about PLU--that it has been deeply mired in the most ignoble hypocrisy for many years? Then, of course, it is used to hypocrisy and will continue to practice it, no matter what I say. But then why change the present Statement of Objectives, if PLU is satisfied with hypocrisy. Will the revised Mission Statement make the present hypocrisy a bit more comfortable?

But let us hope and pray that this depth of hypocrisy is not present at PLU. If it is not, then it is necessary that any Mission Statement continue to express the central faith of PLU in Jesus.

A COMMITMENT TO JESUS IS PRACTICAL

PLU is presently involved in something of a crisis situation. It is heavily dependent upon tuition money, and it desperately needs increased enrollment. Historically, parents wishing to send their children to a Christian school have been a very large part of its constituency. It seems foolhardy to toss away that constituency by denying Christ. There are already a growing number of alumni who are quite aware that PLU has strayed dramatically from its Christian foundations. One student was told by another that there was only one real Christian among the PLU faculty (the reference was not to me, so far as I know). We have been in the process of throwing away our future for some time. To a practical person, this does not seem to be the time to speed up that process but rather to reverse it.

In the present increased competition for college students, it is necessary for a small, expensive, private school to have a specialness about it to attract students. Surely our Christian foundation would be our best selling point. We say that we have a special ability to help students learn to care and behave ethically. Why would anyone believe us? State schools say they are trying to do the same thing. People tend to believe us because they believe that we are Christian, and so are committed to love and caring and high ethics. We are living off of Christ's Name. If we abandon His Name, how long will we live, and what will that "life" be like?

This is the first year of a new president of the university. He will need much trust and support if he is to get PLU through the next few years. In that case, is it wise for one of his first major acts to be to deny Christ in the Mission Statement? Is it wise for the public discussion of the Mission Statement to be held in January when many students are not present, so that it appears that the opinions of the students (many of whom are real Christians) are being slyly evaded? Surely such actions will only make a number of students, faculty, and parents leery of the new president--and quick to drop him when times get hard.

CONCLUSION

I think that the proposed revised Mission Statement should simply be pitched into PLU's collective waste basket. The present Statement of Objectives and its vision for the university should be retained, with perhaps some modification in the few spots where it may no longer be empirically factual.

At the very least, the paragraph from the present Statement of Objectives quoted in the third paragraph of this paper should be retained--as a last paragraph perhaps.

Finally, an element of confusion should be alleviated. At present we have both a Statement of Objectives and a Mission Statement, as well as a History. Is the proposed Mission Statement to replace only the present Mission Statement and leave the Statement of Objectives untouched. The April 23, 1992, memo on the revision suggests that it is a revision of the Statement of Objectives. Is the revision supposed to replace both our present Statement of Objectives and our present Mission Statement? Why do we have two such things, and why is our Statement of Objectives no longer printed in our catalog, as it is supposed to be?

The battle over the proposed Mission Statement is no less than a battle for the soul of PLU. I urge all people of good will to get involved. The Scriptures say clearly that if we deny Jesus before other people, He will deny us before the Father. We need to confess Him, with joy that we have the right and the opportunity to confess Him.

I thank all who have read my thoughts for their generosity and patience.

Glenn Van Wyhe

Post-script: I ask those who belong to the Lord Jesus to enter into this battle. This is a matter which demands earnest prayer from those who pray. Often it is good to pray together and encourage each other. If you want to talk and pray with brothers and sisters, I will be glad to try to arrange such meetings as best I can. Call me at x7305. Let those who are faithful display that faithfulness now.