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The Rice Thresher
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Poster girl with no poster This past summer I helped my aunt relandscape her garden. For me, that meant doing the grunt work - putting down fertilizer and digging holes. One Saturday afternoon she asked me to take the hedge clippers to the burgeoning weeds at the far end of her plot. The offending clump of vegetation consisted mostly of dandelions and some green stalks with little purple buds. As I began to cut, something hit me. These weeds had a kind of wild, natural beauty. They had a grace and style that was lacking in the rest of the neatly planned, carefully orchestrated garden. I put down the clippers. My aunt did not like the weeds and wanted me to take them out because they got in her way. In her mind they interfered with the garden's proper nature. They did not fit the mold she designed for her backyard; they had to go. To me they lent a simple loveliness, even though they were misfits. This experience had slipped my mind until this past week when I saw emails go out about Night of Praise, an activity run jointly by various Christian organizations on campus as an annual alternative to Night of Decadence. It has always seemed odd to me that there would be a worship service set up as an alternative to NOD. For the record, I am a practicing Christian - an Episcopalian - and I believe in God, spreading the good news of salvation and striving to be an example of someone on a faith journey whose life has been blessed. I do not, however, believe that the message NOP sends is the one that we, as Christians together ministering to campus, wish to propagate. Of the endless Sunday School lessons I endured growing up, one that has stayed with me is the New Testament parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector. To summarize briefly: the Pharisee (a learned elder - that's one of the folks who always shows up in the same sentence as the chief priests and scribes) self-aggrandizingly speaks in the temple about his piety, purity and faith - all questionable - in a holier-than-thou manner. He derides the tax collector - at that time, and still, one of the most loathed members of society. Meanwhile, the lowly tax collector, who knows himself to be a sinner goes into the temple, beats his breast and sincerely professes regret for his transgressions. In the garden of humanity, the tax collector was one of the weeds. NOP has the potential to give Christian groups on campus a chance to worship together and offer newcomers to faith and curious visitors a chance to experience community spirituality firsthand. However, when the event is deliberately set against NOD, the event's name even a parody, it looks petty and judgmental - the antithesis of Christian teaching. Jesus hung out with prostitutes, tax collectors and the kinds of people that the Pharisees did not like. The Pharisees began as wise, God-fearing people, but as their numbers and power grew they lost sight of God's word. We, as Christians on this campus, cannot afford to make their mistake. While many of us may not like NOD or the behaviors of college students at public parties, we cannot use our faith as a weapon - setting up a situation where the "good" Pharisees go to NOP, while the "bad" tax collectors go to NOD. Passing judgment is not the responsibility of human beings, according to the tenets of Christianity. As an amateur theologian, I assert that far more good could be done by those involved in NOP if they had the event on another evening. Offering Christian worship as an alternative to NOD is hardly the answer, because it is not mission or ministry to those outside of the established group. Those who go NOP are not newcomers to faith or curious visitors, they are predictable attendees. Rather, if we, as Christians on campus, really want to make a difference we need to offer community, nondenominational worship as the primary activity, not the alternative. It was easy for the Pharisees to talk about their strong faith and their status as God's chosen, but it was far more difficult for the tax collector to confess his faults and work to make himself a better man. We may not like the weeds which surround us - the people whose actions and beliefs we find offensive or distasteful. But if we truly believe that we are all God's children, those of us who profess to be Christians at Rice must practice what we preach. Let us work together to create an atmosphere wherein we open our worship and beliefs to others in a loving, honest and nonjudgmental way. Let us not become the Pharisees Jesus deplored, but rather let us be like the tax collector who wanted more than anything to have the will to humbly continue his journey to faith.
Lizzie Taishoff is features editor and a Wiess College senior.
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