Biola University - Biolan Yearbook (La Mirada, CA)

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Bursting the Bubble Aftershock and Shock Absorbers .by. carol pierce things have a way of falling to pieces, shingles blow off the roof; fenders rust; and nylons run. bubbles have a way of bursting, noth- ing is exempr, not even our ideas. great laws for human interaction were given at mt. sinai which within a few thousand years, deteriorated into a cynical array of legalistic functions, many christians begin their lives with a set of certainties that account for everything, theirs is the only correct tradition, and the only pure one. but when their bubble bursts they stumble into the great glittering world and are dazzled by the compelling alternatives, they see that there are obvious rewards to be had by simply leaving their categories behind, however, if they have been taught to see outside the bubble while they have been growing within it, they will not disavow their Christianity, but only the habits which limit their influence in the world. in matthew 10:16, christ calls his disciples to him and cautions them that he is sending them out like sheep among wolves, there- fore, be shrewd as snakes and innocent as doves. such commands of christ require the bursting of the biola bubble, our mission, to integrate the whole gospel with every area of society, rules out any naive options that the gospel can be shared from inside a bubble; communication of the gospel must be personal, truthful, relevant, and most of all compassionate, nothing else can save us from our uncompassionate loyalty to formulaic lifestyles and customary con- ventions on the one hand or from an unpardonable disregard for the revelation of God on the other. there are a variety of ways to burst the bubble, but the breaking must come at the individual level and is often traumatic, let ' s face it, we are not so separate from the contemporary culture that we don ' t get caught in its cross-fire, we are killed in accidents; our parents get divorced; we get divorced, we starve; we are raped; we are handicapped; we are fearful, sometimes the aftershock of these traumas change our lives forever, often we are not shrewd enough to understand that we can remain separate from the world and yet minister to it, and in our confusion and pain, we turn away from it all. regardless of whether we prick the bubble ourselves or it is pricked by someone else we must be prepared to meet the world without our protective shell, very often we seem to have very little control over when the bubble is broken, but we do have control over gaining the shrewdness with which to deal with a loss of protection, the process of becoming a shrewd christian seems often to involve the corollary process of not only bursting the bubble, but also familiarizing ourselves with the machines of con- temporary culture so that we can learn to live with others, believers and non-believers, with compassion, truth, and timeliness. i have a friend who, with healthy skepticism and frustrating regularity reminds me that that ' s where it all breaks down. and she is right, she is also a shrewd christian because she recognizes the tenuousness of the bubble, that there is a point at which the bubble is mortally vulnerable, she also recognizes the potential danger for the christian who has nothing but her bubble to protect her. and that is the advantage of being a part of the biola bubble, because when we one day find ourselves without our protective shell, also find ourselves surrounded by those who are willing to be a shock-absorber, as a faculty member at biola, i see my responsi- bility as a two-fold: one, i am here to burst the bubble rather than to protect it from potential harm, and two, i am here to assist students in dealing with the aftershock, by the grace of God we all must endure the resulting pain and ensuing tension created by the bub- ble ' s bursting, and go on to prepare ourselves for the world beyond the bubble. and it gets even more complicated after the bubble is burst, because we must prepare for two worlds: the world of needy men and women and the other world, the other world is the world that lies beyond the borders imposed by time and space and contingen- cy, a bubbleless life of freedom instead of constraint, of justice instead of compensation, of redemption instead of protection, be- hold, i make all things new. behold i give you a new bubble which will not be broken. 14

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