I was bad #1

The following is the first of a three part account of my experience seeking the power to live a holier life at Prairie Bible Institute in the early 1970's. I don't want anyone to think I'm knocking the school or the people who sacrificed so much to train me. But I do have issues with the concept of some kind of second blessing that can create instant holiness apart from a deep understanding of the strategy and tactics of spiritual warfare. I suspect that many of my readers will be able to identify with this story.

I was eighteen years old and I don’t know how I could have been more idealistic. I had a good GPA in high school, good test scores, and some very nice scholarship offers. Everyone was encouraging me to go to a college or university. My mom wanted me to be a lawyer because I was very verbal and pretty sharp in an argument. But I wasn’t headed to college.

I felt called to go to Bible School. Bible School is college without an accredited degree and without the general education courses you need to get a bachelor’s degree. With the exception of a few English courses, everything I studied would be Bible or theology. The only problem was, when I got done I would have pretty much the equivalent of a seminary education, only I wouldn’t have a bachelor’s degree much less a master’s.

The closest thing I could find to an adult who didn’t think I was crazy was one man who had heard of the school, the Prairie Bible Institute. His very encouraging comment was that he “didn’t think that it would do me any harm to go there.” Every other adult in my life told me not to go. But I thought God was leading me, so I went.

What a transition it was. This was in 1971. Blue jeans, tee shirts, and rock and roll. And then all of a sudden I was wearing a tie to class, rock and roll was forbidden, and you weren’t allowed to talk to the girls, much less date them.

It was all about holiness at PBI in those days. To be honest with you, I welcomed the emphasis. I had already begun to experience some of the effects of what was going to become full blown seasonal effective disorder during my high school winters. I knew that something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure just what it was. I just felt like I should be able to drive myself to do the right thing. Every single time. All the time. Did I mention that I was idealistic?

They had something called the “Deeper Life” teaching. As best I was able to understand it, it worked something like this. God would give you the power to be more holy by making you “dead” to sin” and “alive to God.” Depending on who was doing the teaching, “dead to sin” either meant you simply weren’t feeling the power of the temptation any longer, or that the power of the desire was greatly weakened. The most vivid illustration I remember was of a dead man in a coffin. You could tempt the corpse with anything you could think of. Money, drugs, sex, whatever. But you couldn’t get the corpse to sin because it didn’t feel the power of the temptation. I longed to achieve that state.