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If you were ever looking for "good" Christianity. I attended a bible college in Canada, and to put it politely, I was heartbroken over the types of people who were being trained to lead and manage churches. I'd say a good majority of them were sent by their parents rather than on their own initiative; they were culturally, ethically, and spiritually not Christian. I'm not perfect, either, but you expect a certain level of effort to be put into spiritual and theological mental investment, which unfortunately was not the case. After that experience, I basically left the church for 10 years, I was so frustrated with many human-related aspects of the church, and I knew I couldn't sit under the leadership of the types of people I went to college with. --- Now, to answer your first question, yes there is value. In the same way I'm a programmer, but I don't care about the historical authenticity of who actually discovered the Pythagorean theorem. Some people care, and I think that's great, that's an area of interest for them. Now, the flip side is, Christians should care that they can trust the documents that form the basis for their beliefs. For your next statement, "most of the students were bored and frustrated...didn't want to know anything about the texts themselves," a person who has no historic knowledge of the scripture should never be a pastor. It sounds like you went to university with people who liked the idea of being a respected leader, and the power that comes with it, and you'll find people like that everywhere, even in your secular workplace. If you truly believe Christians are extremely anti-intellectual, you need to remember, basically every educational organization (ie even secular universities) were originally founded by Christians in the western world, and many of them were likely far more intellectual than you or I. What's crazy is you can also find extremely anti-intellectual non-Christians, too - there are anti-intellectuals everywhere. Typically big sweeping statements like this are from hurt people, and that's horrible that people claiming to be part of the church were so destructive on the things you previously believed. There are a lot of bad apples in the bunch, even the bible says a little leaven will work it's way through the whole dough [1] [2]. [1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians%205%2...
[2] https://www.gotquestions.org/little-leaven-leavens-whole-lum... (does a decent enough overview of the verse and other references) |