Editor’s Note: Bryce turns 30 in 27 weeks. He’s using the 30 weeks leading up to his milestone birthday to reflect on aging and his life so far.
He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”
Matthew 22:37 NRSVue
I was in high school when the first God’s Not Dead movie came out. In fairness to it, I’ve never seen it, but the premise of an atheist professor maniacally trying to convince a classroom full of 18-somethings that God’s not real felt a little too silly to entertain. I’ve had a few memorable experiences with proselytizing atheists trying to sell me and everyone they meet on their lord and savior Nothingness, but the bulk of non-believers I’ve met and befriended are perfectly content to live and let live, so long as your beliefs don’t infringe on their rights to not believe. Since I’m back to school for a few weeks, I wanted to do a multi-part reflection on what being an academic has meant to me so far.
When I left home for my Christian university, several people from my home church warned me that college would challenge and subvert my faith, which struck me as an odd thing to say to someone attending a faith-based university. Nevertheless, they were right. College, even on a largely homogenous cultural campus, has the potential to expose you not just to different ideas but to whole new epistemologies. College (ideally) teaches you not so much what to think but how to think. And this idea is threatening to people (of all flavors and ideologies) who want to indoctrinate others unquestioningly.
People change with new experiences. This is part of what makes love, in all forms, dangerous. In order to love someone, you have to love a moving target, a thing with shape that will one day look different. To love someone who goes to college is to accept that when they come home, they may not be the same person you sent off.
Deciding to become an academic came in my senior year of college, after a conversation with my research supervisor who sold me on the idea of being a professor. Prior to that, I had no fully formed idea about what I wanted to do. I’m eternally grateful to that conversation for putting me on the often frustrating but ultimately rewarding path of academia. Even when I hate it, I can’t imagine having to do anything else. With a little luck, I won’t ever have to.
I don’t remember any pushback from people I loved on my decision to enter the academy. In some ways, the transition made sense. I come from a long line of educators. The K-12 space is different but not completely divorced from the things college students do.
There’s a colloquial saying, “everything changes when it’s someone you know.” This idea is that you can have passionate feelings about a topic intellectually and theoretically, but it’s hard to maintain that passion when the topic becomes something with skin that sits in your house and a laugh that passes into your ears. Although I’ve never known who has told me that I’m dangerous, I have had people who’ve congratulated me on earning my doctorate and starting as a professor post links to Turning Point USA’s professor watchlist and continue to decry higher education as a “woke” and “dangerous” system.
I feel like I’ve carried this prejudice into my classrooms with me, always cautious to challenge students, but allow room for pushback. I know that many of my religious students walk into the classroom fearful that I’m there to, at best, deconstruct all of their beliefs and, at worst, mock them for these beliefs. This is what a student thought happened at the University of Oklahoma last year, an issue I’ve written about previously. When this happened, so many of my friends came out in support of the student and against the teaching assistant. I don’t know exactly how I feel about the situation, and I don’t know exactly what I would have done in the same situation, but I do know that if I was placed into the national spotlight, many of my friends would come against me.
I know this because they’ve done so over much less. I think about all the phone calls I’ve had over the years with people who have claimed to be my friend that have flipped 180 after a disagreement, unearthing past secrets to weaponize against me now that I’m the enemy instead of the friend. I live in fear of ending up on national news for something a Christian student says about me, and I live in fear knowing that I’d be fighting as many friends as foes in that moment. But I also know that this is the career path the Lord has ordained for me.
I think if the disconnect and dissatisfaction comes down to a root, it’s a frustration with a tribalism that always forces us to choose sides. It’s also probably my insecure attachment and my craving to be loved by everyone. I want to be celebrated and affirmed as an academic and as a Christian, but I also know, as a Christian, that my affirmation cannot be in the hands of humans. I suppose I want to be someone but that I’ll settle for just being someone they know.
I’m glad God made me to work in academia. I’m thankful for the opportunity to worship God in and out of the classroom by pursuing and sharing knowledge. I’m grateful for the chance to mentor young people at a pivotal time in their life. And I also wish that being an academic didn’t always feel like it was putting me on my back foot with my siblings in Christ.
Bryce Van Vleet is the author of Tired Pages and Before We All Die Let’s Have One Last Chat by the Fireside. He sells poetry art here, published a collection of poems titled Weak Eyes, and masquerades as the spoken word artist Liihey. He has been described by strangers on the internet as everything from a covert transgender athlete to a Christian Nationalist. He has also been told he’s gay because he’s not on the keto diet (which he technically can’t disprove). You can support him by clicking through blog posts or donating (scroll to the bottom of the page).
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