Still a Creationist…Still a Calvinist

Such was the writing on the top of the graduation cap of a student who graduated yesterday from Calvin University. 

You have seen those graduation caps with their clever messages, like “Thanks, Mom and Dad,” “Free Palestine,”  “Save the Planet,” or $51,934 Later…have you not?  The graduates are excited.  “No more teachers, no more books.  No more teachers dirty looks…”  School’s out for the summer, or even for good for most.  On to the real world.  Just before that, on their graduation day, the students make a statement.  On their hat.

For the student with the “Still a Creationist…Still a Calvinist” cap, he was excited that there would be, after four long years at Calvin, no more apostate teachers, no more books and lectures denying the faith, no more flippant prayers, and more putting questions in naïve, clueless minds in the making, no more Critical God Theories.  And yes, no more dirty looks from professors who did not like being challenged, even respectfully, on their doctrine, their life, and their tolerance of everything but biblical intolerance, biblical militancy, biblical holiness.

The saying on the cap of this student was one last challenge– one last word to the whole lot of a faculty and administration corrupt to the core, almost to a man and woman.  The last word was, basically: you have not been able to move me from the rock of the truth of the word of God.  It was a last holy sneer at devils, at science falsely so-called, at wind-bag PhD’s, at an entire ridiculous Gender Studies Department, at those who are responsible for making Calvin a safe space for queers, gays, and all manner of sodomites and for not, instead, warning them of the wrath to come.  It was God himself through a man’s standing for him holding in derision all those who toy with his word, corrupt it, and lead many astray…holding in holy derision all those who in the name of scholarship would break the bands of truth asunder.

Still a Creationist…Still a Calvinist was a sermon with no fluff.  Six words of indictment of an institution by a young soldier for truth on his way out, who has graduated and gained something from his education in spite of many who sought to trip him up in his walk with the Lord.

The Cap, the Creationist, the Calvinist was testimony to the faithfulness of God.   Still a Creationist…Still a Calvinist declares God is still God.  He stands by his own.  No matter what the onslaught, no matter how many, how devious the lies.  The Lord knows them that are his.  The Lord honors them who honor him—with their caps, in their callings, in life’s many trials and tribulations…as they graduate from one school, but are still, by grace, enrolled in the school of Christ, only finally to graduate when they die and go to heaven.

Thank God for that young man with the cap, a faithful son of the Father and of this father and his mother.  Thank God for his grace blessing this last one of our six children to graduate from the once upon a time hallowed halls of a now hollow diversity of a university…unscathed and still faithful to the word, to the faith, to God.Graduated, did each, with honor.  Magna cum laude.  With great praise…to God.