Baptists: 
50 years ago: Entering OBU, the place that changed my life 
by Bill Jones

Fifty years ago this week, I entered Oklahoma Baptist University as a freshman.

To this day, there is no place I feel such a peace – a closeness to God – as I do on the rare occasions I return to Bison Hill. The reason is not a mystery . . . it’s simple . . . God used my four years at OBU to change my life forever. It was there I began a journey . . . a walk with God that continues today and will continue into eternity.

My most recent visit was less than a year ago, November 2018, for Homecoming and the 45^th‑anniversary reunion of my 1973 graduating class. At our reunion luncheon, I sat with old friends who went through our faith struggles together during those years; I also heard other friends speak about their own faith struggles, friends who I had no idea were struggling just as I was at that time, trying to make sense out of new challenges to the faith they brought with them as freshmen.

God changed my life in numerous ways while at OBU, but by far the two most significant changes were (1) my sophomore year, I lost my faith and began what I called my “search” or “struggle” for a more authentic faith; and (2) my senior year, I met Joanna Wong, who ultimately became the love of my life (we’ll celebrate our 43^rd wedding anniversary this coming Wednesday, September 4).

I grew up in a loving Christian home and accepted Christ in April 1961, barely a month after my 10^th birthday, and was baptized the following week. During my teen years, my life revolved around church activities, especially Youth Choir. I came to love vocal/choral music; our music minister, Joe Dell Rust, became a strong influence in my life. By the time I was 15 or so, I knew I wanted to become a music minister.

Joe was a graduate of OBU, and through his influence and that of his predecessor, Richard Lin, an OBU professor who had served at our church while studying for his doctorate at the conservatory in Kansas City, MO, I realized OBU was where I wanted to study. In the summer of 1969, as I was preparing to leave for college, I met regularly with Joe Rust on Saturday mornings in the shade of his backyard, as he helped prepare me for Music Theory. (Those two years of Elementary and Advanced Theory turned out to be my strongest classes while at OBU, culminating in my receiving the highest grade in our Advanced Theory class the 2^nd semester of my sophomore year. Thank you, Joe Rust!)

So I entered OBU on a Church Music degree, with a major in voice and a minor in piano. I had never even considered any other profession or major.

I also entered OBU with a “faith” that I had never questioned. Oh, I had doubts about God, about the afterlife, etc., but I had suppressed them, just refused to deal with them or even admit they were there, and I certainly didn’t voice them. Doubts and questions like . . . okay, so God made everything, but where did God come from? . . . everything on Earth ultimately comes to an end, so how can life actually be eternal? . . . you know, easy questions like that!

During my freshman year at OBU, I began to become aware that some of the guys in Brotherhood Dorm were actually questioning their faith out loud. I remember talking, late in the spring semester, with one of my freshman friends down the hall – whose father was one of my dad’s colleagues at the SBC Home Mission Board – and discovering that he had started questioning his faith very seriously. When he said that all of these things we had grown up learning & believing, that Jesus was the Son of God, etc., were not facts, I recoiled. Of course they’re facts, I argued. Everything in the Bible is a fact!

I’ve often said I wish I had kept a journal during my college years. Going back and trying to figure out the progression of my thinking during that time is a lost cause.

But I’ll forever remember Thursday, November 12, 1970, the day that changed my life like no other day ever has.

Western Civilization was a relatively new offering at OBU, a two-hour class that was team‑taught by a history professor and a literature professor. One would take the first hour, the other would take the second hour, but both would be in there for the full two hours to help integrate the history with the literature.

That morning in Western Civ, our literature professor, Dr. Bill Mitchell (history professor was Dr. Jim Marcum), was teaching Inferno from Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Now I don’t recall anything about The Divine Comedy (though I still have my copy & have promised myself that I’m going to read it), and I don’t recall what page we were on or the context of Dr. Mitchell’s remarks about it. All I remember are four words uttered by Dr. Mitchell: “There are no absolutes.”

In that one moment, my life changed forever. God started me on a journey that continues today. Regardless of whatever Dr. Mitchell’s context was, in that moment, the little voice in my brain said, “Hmmm, he’s right. I can’t absolutely prove any of this stuff I believe.”

I walked into Western Civ class that morning secure in my beliefs, believing I had all the answers. I walked out of Western Civ class that morning, having nothing but questions but knowing that I no longer believed there was a God and even less that Jesus was God’s son.

In one fell swoop, the time it took for Dr. Mitchell to speak four words, six syllables, the foundation of my beliefs – a foundation built over the first 19-1/2 years of my life – had crumbled.

That afternoon, back in Brotherhood Dorm, I shared my earth-shaking (to me) news with Ron Russey, who was the resident assistant for our section; Ron and his roommate shared a suite with my roommate, Cary Wood, and me.

Ron was a ministerial student; he had been president of Baptist Student Union my freshman year and now was president of Ministerial Alliance. It’s interesting to look back and compare the reactions of the first two people I told about the loss of my faith. Ron Russey was understanding, because he had dealt with – still was, for that matter – a lot of serious questions about God. He was caring and sympathetic, and my situation moved him to call a section meeting a few nights later in which he confessed, “I haven’t been doin’ my job good,” saying that he now realized he needed to be more sensitive to the struggles the guys in his section were facing. As we talked in Ron’s room that afternoon, another friend, Steve Troxel, walked in and asked what was going on. Ron told him about my experience, and Steve looked at me and replied, “Well, the devil sure got ahold of you!” Then he turned around and walked out.

I don’t think I ever spoke with Steve again (even though he lived in the room right next door to mine), and I’ve never trusted Fundamentalists since that day. Twenty or so years later, when OBU came out with an alumni directory, I looked up Steve’s name. Guess where he wound up – as a professor at Jerry Falwell’s Fundamentalist indoctrination factory, Liberty University. They deserved each other! Both hateful, both condemning, both insufferably arrogant.

I was hurting. It’s a terrible thing to suddenly lose what you saw as the foundation of your life, your hope for the future. Besides that, if I didn’t get this thing resolved in a hurry, I could no longer stay with my Church Music degree. Well, this kind of struggle doesn’t lend itself to a quick resolution. I shared my struggle with my voice professor, Dr. Richard Farley. Dr. Farley was a sweet, gentle Christian, and he treated me much as my parents did – with love and understanding. But he told me that I had no choice – that I couldn’t honestly stay with Church Music.

Well, I had never considered anything else, didn’t really care about anything but music. So I switched to a Music Education degree, and that’s the diploma I received in 1973. That’s another story for another day – but the upshot is that I had never really wanted to teach, so when I got out of OBU, I had no idea of what to do with my life, and I tried several different avenues in the ensuing years.

But back to 1970 and my newly-birthed faith struggle. God blessed me with friends in the dorm, especially Cary and Ron, who – mainly in late-night bull sessions – helped me begin to think for myself, learning how to search and struggle with faith. Though I no longer believed in God, I hadn’t given up the search for God. I prayed this prayer frequently: “God, I don’t know if you’re there, but – if you are – please don’t give up on me.” That’s my testimony today – that God didn’t give up on me and helped me not to give up on God.

Maybe that’s what makes me so emotional about being on Bison Hill – it’s the place where God didn’t give up on me.

At one point, Ron strongly suggested I go see Jerry Barnes, pastor of University Baptist Church across the street from campus. In February 1971, I did just that, and told Jerry, point-blank, that I no longer believed in God. Jerry’s response? “Come join our church.”

Had he not heard what I just told him – that I didn’t believe in God anymore? He had heard, but he knew that, if I wanted to search for God, I needed to be in church – but not just any church. I needed to be in a church where God was preached as a God of grace, love, and understanding.

Jerry’s preaching was like no preaching I had ever heard, making me dig for a deeper understanding of God and scripture. He met with me in his study, once a semester over the next couple of years, for me to update him on the progress of my search, and for him to help suggest the next steps I could take.

My Sunday School teacher at University Baptist was James Hurley, a Natural Sciences professor at OBU, whose Sunday School lessons were as deep and thought-provoking as Jerry’s sermons. I still have handouts he had photocopied from pages of a book we discussed in his class, titled “The Death of God: The Culture of Our Post-Christian Era,” by Gabriel Vahanian. Not your garden-variety Sunday School lessons!

My struggle didn’t end at OBU . . . I wish I had kept a journal, as I have no idea just where I was in my search when I graduated. But OBU is where God knocked out the props of a shallow belief system and began leading me, step by faltering step, replacing my “absolute facts” with a faith built on a relationship with Christ – the Christ who challenges me, day by day, to walk in his steps, to live as he showed us how to live, loving and caring for those he called “the least of these,” promoting justice and fighting injustice, working for peace, and staying close to God in prayer. OBU is where that began. Thanks be to God for OBU.

OBU is where God didn’t give up on me.

Last November, as I stood alone on Bison Hill late in the evening, looking up toward the steeple of Raley Chapel, I sang quietly, to myself, the Hymn to the Alma Mater, remembering my friend Warren M. Angell, Dean of the Fine Arts College when I was at OBU – who led us, with great grace, in that beautiful hymn so many times – with tears in my eyes and choking the words out as I went:

OBU, all hail thy name. Sons and daughters honor thee.May thy standard green and gold lead eternally.Proudly stand on Bison Hill, ‘neath the wind-swept sky.Alma Mater, we will praise thee, as the years go by.As the shades of evening fall, through the hush of fading day,Silent voices praise thy name, hearts look up to pray.May thy spirit guide thy sons, keep thy daughters true,Loyal to our Alma Mater. God bless OBU.Amen