Sharing stories from the classroom is a favorite pastime for old teachers. And “old” is an adjective I’m learning to live with. But it’s the new stories that have triggered this column, stories that illustrate why teaching religion classes on an Adventist college campus is so exciting these days. When I began teaching at Walla Walla College (WWC) in the early 1970s, I was caught off guard by my students’ ignorance of the book of Daniel. I came prepared to tussle with Uriah Smith. “Uriah who?” they said. Typically, the fiery furnace and the lion’s den marked the limits of their knowledge. For many, the 2300 days of Daniel 8:14 simply did not exist.

Perhaps the loss of interest in 1844 issues should not be surprising in a culture ruled by relevance and immediacy. But I continue to be startled by low levels of general biblical literacy, even among students who have been well exposed to Adventism. Several years ago, for example, a bright, highly motivated premed student came to see me about her poor performance on the midterm in my upperdivision History of Adventism class. Though she was not an Adventist herself, her boyfriend was. She had attended an Adventist academy for a year and was now in her third year on our campus.

As I was explaining my goals for the class, I happened to mention the Old and New Testaments. “Wait,” she said. “Old and New Testaments—are those books in the Bible?”

Reining in my astonishment, I ended up proposing a customized reading assignment for her, which included passages from Scripture. “Begin with the Gospels,” I suggested. “Gospels,” she replied, a note of near-panic in her voice. “Are those in the Old Testament or New? Will my boyfriend know where they are?” I told her I certainly hoped so.

More recently I had a remarkable experience with a student who ended up in a class that assumed more biblical literacy than she was able to muster. In her case, I suggested eight hours of reading from the Bible, beginning with the story of Abraham in Genesis 12. To my amazement, she spent all eight hours on Genesis 12-25, never getting beyond the story of Abraham. Wanting her to move beyond the tedious minutia of her written summary, I pressed her gently in an effort to find out what she actually thought about her reading. It took several nudges from me before she opened up. But then she opened wide: “I was sitting on the edge of my chair,” she exclaimed. “I’d always been taught that it’s wrong to take a second wife and all the way along I was waiting for God to tell Abraham that, but He never did!”

But now let’s turn from extraordinary individual cases to look at the larger group. And I’ll start with a class of nursing students on our Portland campus. Old-timers may not be aware how much times have changed in certain of our college programs. In my student days—the 1960s, virtually all WWC nursing students came from an Adventist background. Now it is not unusual for the Adventist students to be in the minority. In one of my Portland classes in the autumn of 2005, for example, only five of fifteen students came from an Adventist orientation.

Early in the quarter I told the class that two Old Testament stories had loomed large for me when I was growing up: Uzzah and the ark (2 Samuel 6) and the two she-bears that mauled the 42 boys for mocking Elisha (2 Kings 2:23-24). The bears had kept my prayers polite. Even though most modern translations suggest that the bears didn’t finish off the boys but just gave them a good thrashing (the Contemporary English Version ups the ante by having them “ripped to pieces”), I wasn’t going to risk a run-in with the bears for being too fresh with God. I would be well into my adult years before the combined efforts of Abraham, Moses, Job, and the Psalmists would convince me that I could be blunt with God and live to tell the tale.

But it was Uzzah who really loomed large. The story in the Bible suggests that Uzzah was just trying to be helpful when David was taking the ark to Jerusalem in an ox cart. It makes little difference whether the oxen “shook” the ark as in 2 Samuel or “stumbled” as in 1 Chronicles; in either case, when Uzzah reached out to steady the ark, “God struck him...and he died there beside the ark of God” (2 Samuel 6:7).

Even if left to my own devices, I might have concluded from the biblical story that even if I was trying to do right, but somehow got it wrong, the Lord would still strike me down. But I wasn’t left to my own devices. I got lots of help interpreting the story from hearing Adventist evangelistic sermons. “Is God Particular?” was the classic title for the sermon in which Uzzah starred. The point? Motivating listeners to keep the seventh-day Sabbath, even if their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents had faithfully kept Sunday. In spite of good intentions, the Lord brooks no deviation from his stated will. God is particular. Remember Uzzah.

And when our own daughters were young, I still vividly remember sitting on our sofa reading the Sabbath school lesson from the Primary Treasure. The conclusion to the lesson ran something like this: “Therefore, boys and girls, be sure to obey your Mommy and Daddy. Remember Uzzah.”

But if Uzzah has left his mark on me, times have changed. For when I mentioned his name and the story of the two she-bears to my class of nursing students, I saw blank faces. So I asked how many of them knew those two stories. Not a hand went up, not even from the Adventist students.

My curiosity was sufficiently aroused that when I returned to the main campus I asked the 40 students in my History of Adventism class if they knew the stories of Uzzah and the two bears. Again I was surprised by the number of hands that did not go up, maybe a quarter to a third. So just as I had done in Portland, I read the stories to them from the Bible.

But the next day I decided to get more precise. I passed out slips of paper on which the students were to indicate (anonymously) how familiar the stories were to them before I had read them in class. I had them list each story separately and rank their knowledge from 0 to 5.

Of the 35 students who responded, three indicated that the story of Uzzah was brand-new to them; another six marked it 1 or 2. The two she-bears fared even worse: seven had never heard it before, another 12 marked 1 or 2.

Then a few days later I asked the same group of students how many had grown up shaped by Ellen White’s strictures against eating between meals: “You should never let a morsel pass your lips between your regular meals” (Testimonies 2:373). I, for example, had not been allowed to eat the refreshments at birthday parties unless they were served at mealtime. I had to take them home and eat them later. Not a single student raised a hand to indicate that kind of upbringing. It’s worth noting that when I put the same question to a group of some 60 older Adventists at a well-known Adventist church in the Northwest, not a single one of them indicated that they had been raised as I was, though they knew of Adventists who were.

I will not tell the story here of how Romans 14 helped me to value people more than my personal health habits, and how the study of Ellen White’s life and writings helped me to deal effectively with Uzzah, the two she-bears, and morsels of food offered between meals. But I will say that she has helped to liberate me from prison, enabling me to value her ministry and writings even more.

But the punch line to this piece is that our Adventist world is not what it used to be. When Uzzah and the two she-bears ride off into the sunset and choice morsels of food are available on every hand, you know our world is going to be different. Will it be a better world? It could be—with fewer threats, more joy, more genuine love for each other. Maybe we could help demonstrate the truth of the scientific study reported in the Adventist Review of February 13, 1992. “The absence of social ties is as strongly linked to a shortened life span as cigarette smoking.”

I think it would be marvelous if we could strengthen our social ties and ponder what we should do about Uzzah and the two she-bears. After all, the stories are still in the Bible, and most of us need the big stick at least some of the time.

As for the tasty morsels, I do eat between meals now, for good reasons, I believe, and with only slight twinges from the imprinting of my earlier days. But that is another story for another time.

pp.18,19  adventist today | vol. 13 issue 5