Letter to the Editor
In last week’s opinion piece entitled “Intentional Exclusion Evident to LGBT+ students,” the author makes the case that Calvin College does not have a model for LGBT+ students “to live wholeheartedly.” I disagree. Calvin College does have a model according to which LGBT+ students and all students can and should live wholeheartedly — unto God. The problem is that this model has not been emphasized and implemented by the college for at least the last 20 years. The model is the holy scriptures on which Calvin College was founded. In Ephesians 4:22-24 we read: That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.
Therein lies the model for all students to follow.
This may not please five percent of the student body, but Christians and true Christian colleges are not on earth to please everyone.
Derrick Kamp • Mar 2, 2018 at 12:52 pm
In Ephesians 4, Paul is imploring the church to turn away from the greed of the world and “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love” (v2; NIV). In the verses following your quoted passage, Paul clarifies that Christians must turn away from anger and stealing (25-28), He ends the chapter by articulating what the “old man” is: one filled with “bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.”(v31) The “new man,” Paul writes, is someone who is “kind and compassionate … forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”(v32)
This Bible passage, in conjunction with Jesus’ command to care for ALL people (Matt 25:40), is exactly the model “Intentional Exclusion Evident to LGBT+ Students” argues Calvin College better adopt.