John Brown University's Student Newspaper
The Sabbath day has been celebrated since the time of Moses and has been considered a holy day ever since. It is considered an ancient and sacred tradition held on the seventh day. The Sabbath celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. It enables us as humans to appreciate the creation of man and be grateful for what God has done for us every day.
Hamas is an acronym for Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiya (Islamic Resistance Movement). The party is a Suni-Islamic fundamentalist Palestinian nationalist organization. It is one of the two major political parties within the Palestinian territories, and it has been the de facto authority in the Gaza strip since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005. Hamas has been declared a terrorist organization by both the United States and Israel, despite a 2018 United Nations resolution rejecting this characterization. Shortly after the first intifada (a series of Palestinian protests and violent riots), Hamas published the Hamas Charter on August 18, 1988, wherein they called for the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state in historic Palestine. Hamas would later publish a revised edition of the charter in 2017, but for the purposes of this analysis, we will look at the language of the 1988 edition exclusively.
Julian Assange is an Australian computer programmer, journalist, and the founder of WikiLeaks—a clearinghouse media organization that serves as a hub for whistleblowing and the publication of classified government documents. Assange is currently being held at Belmarsh Prison in southeast London, where he has been awaiting extradition to the U.S. since April 2019 on an indictment of espionage for the publication of classified documents.
Following the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israeli forces claimed victory over the Sinai Peninsula, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights; the United Nations passed Resolution 242, calling for lasting peace in exchange for Israel’s withdrawal from captured territories. However, Resolution 242 did not explicitly require Israel to withdraw from its captured territories, and they began to expand Jerusalem’s municipal borders, taking in large areas of open land. They restricted the boundaries of Palestinian neighborhoods en masse, limiting the growth of Palestinian communities. Since that time, Palestinians have been systemically disenfranchised. The Israeli legal landscape has imposed a permit regime over Palestinians living in and around the West Bank, which, according to a report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, was home to some 2.9 million people as of 2019.
Last Thursday, the Center for Faith and Flourishing hosted a lecture by Dr. Tony Jelsma on gender dysphoria and the Christian perspective. Dr. Jelsma is a professor of biology at Dort University in Iowa, with a distinguished background in microbiology, cancer, and neuroscience research. The event turnout was fantastic, with standing room only in Bynum theatre. The big turnout implies that the student body is actively interested in gender dysphoria.
An Editorial put out by The Threefold Advocate attracted my attention recently. Entitled “Essentials of Spiritual Inaccessibility and other JBU Classes,” the author argued that the difficulty of JBU’s required Bible curriculum was proving detrimental to students’ faith, associating this with young people leaving the church! This is a fairly serious accusation, but the author’s reasoning left something to be desired. The piece began by describing the apparent horrors of test days and assignments in detail, which would make excellent material for a psychological thriller. It abstained from discussing whether this anxiety is true of other JBU classes. I will leave readers to explore the gory details for themselves here, but this dramatization provides the basis for the main claim: excessively difficult Bible classes teach students that “the Bible is too complicated…to understand and is inaccessible to the non-theologically trained reader.” JBU is failing in its mission to “develop the spiritual being” of students at a base level by allowing theological content to be “inaccessible and unattainable,” especially with respect to grading. This leads “many students” to question the faith, which the author associates with the exodus of young people from the church. Christian education (JBU included, presumably) is “turning away and failing a majority of their students” due to a lack of distinction between “academics and spirituality” that “negatively” affects “some students and their faith lives in severe ways.” In order to mitigate against this danger, JBU ought to center these classes on “theological understanding rather than testing and grading.”
Learning how to think is a process; it is a discipline. It requires patience. It is painful at first, but it gets more natural, deeper, and broader with practice. Ask the “why” questions, not just the “what” questions. Use your imagination. “Become” a Buddhist for a week, then come back to yourself and take an inventory. You will notice that you have changed. Do this regularly, with discipline and purpose, and you will learn how to think.
The underground community of JBU nonconformists has been missing for too long now, but Yik Yak is signaling revitalization. The nonconformists are disjointed and isolated at the moment, but they are waving their flags on the anonymous platform. There are no veterans in living memory to guide and unify them, and the lessons of past mistakes will have to be learned all over again. There is a long and difficult road ahead for the troublemakers, and I wish them well on their journey. JBU will never be a proper university without them. College isn’t college without a few cautionary tales, some legendary slip-ups, and one or two celebrated students who made it out unscathed. I am not suggesting that all students should break rules or deal with the devil, nor am I suggesting that there is anything wrong with the way JBU operates. University students are young and idealistic, they need something to fight against, a line to cross, a constraint to resist. Rules are to rebels as lighting is to thunder. Rebels are essential to the composition of the collective personality of the student body; without them, we’re all just drones walking to class with no spark or intrigue.
This has been a consistent issue of mine during my higher education. I have found with almost all my classes that, if I do the bare minimum and turn in assignments complete and on time, I get a 100% on nearly everything with zero constructive feedback. This leads me to wonder if completing an assignment or mindlessly writing to make word-count leads to true academic growth? Furthermore, does it lead to real critical thinking? After three years of college, I do not think so. Paper after paper I have written with my instructor’s bias in mind, and, largely, I cannot say that I am better for it.
As stated in the “About” section of our website, The Threefold’s been around for quite a while now — 1937, in fact. Ever since the past year, our team has been reflecting on our work and legacy, especially as we see some of the last Communication students on campus graduate this semester. I unexpectedly found myself caught in these musings while researching for an article on some of the trailblazing women of JBU. One of my primary sources for this task was a JBU history book by renowned Gateway author Rick Ostrander, titled “Head, Heart, and Hand: John Brown University and Modern Evangelical Higher Education.” I primarily used Ostrander’s text due to his willingness to bluntly discuss the challenges and misgivings of JBU in its history, especially compared to some uncomfortably gracious authors. My research naturally led me to many locations that contained discussions of diversity and challenging issues. I was surprised, however, to see The Threefold’s name mentioned so consistently. My curiosity got the best of me, and I knew I had to write another article.