WHY DO WE PROTEST AGAINST GOD? (College Protests Part 2: When Pandemonium Rules Our Hearts)

WINSDAY WISDOM 234

DO YOU EVER PROTEST AGAINST GOD ABOUT YOUR LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES? WHY?

We don’t call it a protest, but that is exactly what our complaints lead to when pandemonium rules our hearts. Why? I have included some important thoughts for your consideration that began with my first-hand observation of college protests. Surprisingly, there is a spiritual connection with a valuable lesson for your life.

In a previous session, I referred to being tear gassed during my college years while sitting in a tree watching the encounter of riot police with disruptive student protesters from the mixed trifecta of anti-war, racial equality, and women’s liberation groups.

That spring brought the protests even closer. Several hundred students participated in a group sit-in protest at the main college offices. Their refusal to leave elevated the tension.

About seventy people from the local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society marched into University Hall and pushed out the administrative staff and faculty. The assistant dean of students was forcefully evicted.

The protesters refused to leave as they chained the doors from the inside. As the building takeover continued through the night, about five hundred additional students joined in the office sit-in by climbing through the windows.

By the next morning, four hundred police armed with shields, clubs, and mace stormed the building. The students were carried out of the building, handcuffed, and placed into a paddy wagon. A few came out bloodied from a baton striking the head. College learning was at its finest.

Nearly three thousand students gathered to watch the altercation. I had a front row seat for this. Actually, it was a balcony view from a second-floor dorm room less than twenty yards from the action. We should have sold tickets.

This was quite a shock to this small-town teenager whose picture was included on the front page of the Boston morning newspaper. This was almost as entertaining as the Love Story movie which just completed filming on the campus.

My purpose for this account is more than a documentary of social unrest at college. These events shaped my skepticism of our democratic process. These were future nationally elected politicians who demanded others submit to their current worldview. They would use lawful disobedience and force when necessary.

Today, the latest social disagreements get TV time on CNN and Fox News, with seemingly the new players on stage using the same dialogue and tactics of days gone by. I have seen all this before in The Way We Were.

While I reminisce, allow me to include the massive student rally held in the football stadium for the purpose of debating the War and its protests. There was a call for “a new revolution.” Over ten thousand students attended, mainly because it was a nice sunny, spring day.

Note: I repeat my personal observation that college student protests take place in comfortable weather conditions. Students are not as dumb as they act.

Pandemonium ruled our hearts that day. Please try to follow along. This was wild, crazy, bizarre, and just wrong. It was a preview of today’s political scene.

At the stadium, a liberal speaker called for a student vote to extend their unofficial boycott of class attendance as a protest to the government’s continued and escalating involvement in the Viet Nam War. There were four hours of speeches and votes.

One would think the prospect of not going to class would prevail in any college student vote.

However, when the time came to yell “Yes” to continue the strike or “No” not to strike, the chorus of “No” was unmistakably much louder than those in favor of cancelling classes.

Following the cheers, the unhappy student leader on the microphone announced the verdict was too close to call. A second verbal vote sounded much like the first. However, a protest of the protest counting method was submitted by a young lady trying to run the entire meeting.

The person at the microphone announced an amendment to the voting because some students were yelling too loud. Yes! Yelling too loud!

The leadership called for a re-vote by a show of hands with each section assigned a vote counter. After a lengthy time of counting the votes, it was announced the classroom strike had been defeated by a sizeable margin.

But do not be discouraged my dear liberal friends. The young lady reappeared at the microphone to protest the vote count. She countered that many students had raised both hands into the air, thus eschewing the correct tally.

The #4 re-vote of the #3 re-vote required us to stand in affirmation or negation of the proposed class boycott. Another count was instituted, section by section and row by row. The motion was defeated…again.

Based on some technicality that Harvard moderators could not count and amidst a rising sense of student dissatisfaction with the entire endeavor, another vote by secret ballot was required. Each student had to show a university identification card before being issued a ballot for the #5 re-vote.

Many ballots were just airmailed to the stadium turf. The Wright brothers would have been impressed with the varied versions of paper airplanes launched from the Coliseum steps.

The vote was closer, but the motion was defeated. More speakers joined Miss “I Know Better Than the Rest of the World.” The heated exchanges were not entertaining enough to hold the crowd’s attention any longer.

Some students were suffering from sunburn. More importantly, it was now dinnertime and those interested in eating before the dining room closed voted with their feet as they left the stadium in hordes.

As we crossed the river bridge over a half-mile away, there was a small roar that went up from the nearly vacant stadium.

ANTI-WAR HARVARD STUDENT BODY VOTES TO BOYCOTT CLASSES. That was the headline of the next morning newspaper. It reported that the Harvard student body voted to stop going to classes as a means of protesting the war.

That is correct. The newspaper reporter was part of the protest movement.

This was Politics 101, whether conservative or liberal. The politicians use questionable tactics to manipulate, overturn, redefine, recount, or alter the desire of the voters to get what the politicians want. If all else fails, scream louder or manipulate the vote counts.

Am I a skeptic? Many of the student protest leaders at the stadium fiasco ended up in national politics. I have never been shocked by the incompetence of our government leadership. I am familiar with the breeding grounds.

This student protest on the Harvard campus was not the first or the last.  Over two hundred years earlier, the students of 1766 staged the “Butter Protest.” With the rallying cry, “Behold our butter stinketh!” The college responded by expelling one hundred fifty-five students.

Now, the students just have a sit-down protest over climate change during the halftime of the great Harvard-Yale football rivalry.

In my days of student unrest, the response by the university’s administration to the student protest was unprecedented. The university leadership was as mixed up as the dining hall goulash. They also had about as much spine as the chef’s Jello salad.

The university declared that students in opposition to the war protesters’ boycott would be given the option to attend classes to improve their grade point average. However, to appease the anti-war crowd, the university would allow students not to attend classes and receive a pass-fail grade based on their current standing in the class.

I never voted to go on strike, but I never attended another class that spring. It was my favorite semester in college. The weather was very pleasant. I spent a lot of time sitting in the sun, down by the banks of the River Charles. I also became a regular at the Boston Red Sox baseball games where students could sit in the right field bleachers for one dollar.

For the record, I passed all my classes and that helped to raise my GPA. Go figure.

PROTEST: a statement or action expressing disapproval of or objection to something.

DO YOU PROTEST AGAINST GOD? MOST OF THE TIME, OUR LIPS SHOUT “NO” WHILE OUR HEART WRITES THE NEWS HEADLINE THAT WE VOTED AGAINST GOD’S RULE. WHY?

1. At the superficial level, we all believe we can run this world better than whoever is in charge.
2. At the most foundational level, we distrust the goodness of the God who is in charge of our lives.

We want to rule our world and everyone in it. However, there will be a countless multitude of people lined up to protest how you want to rule your world.

What do you say when you do not like the path where God placed you? How do you react when you do not approve of God’s plan for your life? Do you protest to God or about God? Do you organize others to march in consolation to your perceived mistreatment?

The old preacher, Dr. J. Vernon McGee wrote, “This is God’s universe, and He is doing things His way. You may think you have a better way, but you don’t have a universe to rule. If you don’t like that, go get your own universe.”

Our protests are generated by our questions of God’s goodness. We consider God to be unfair. We entertain the thought that God is withholding goodness we deserve. That is exactly the protest which began with Adam and Eve. We inherited that same spirit of protest.

We begin to think God is unable or unwilling to meet our desires. We decide God is not truly good when it comes to our circumstances.

We are powerless to change God’s plan and placement, but that does not prevent our protests. We might not use signs, but the expression of our countenance clearly signals our displeasure.

We might not organize a boycott or strike against God; we just skip Bible reading and church fellowship. We do not want to hear God’s Word, and there it is…the problem with our protests.

OUR IGNORANCE OF GOD IS AT THE HEART OF ALL OUR PROTESTS.

Why do we protest? We do not know God which leads to distrust of God’s goodness. That is the root cause of our protests.

God’s Word shows the foolishness of our protests. Everything God does is wise, right, and good. God works all things together for our greatest good. God’s goodness and mercy chase us down all the days of our earthly lives, and He promises unlimited and unending goodness forever.

THE ESSENCE OF GOD IS HIS GOODNESS.

God’s love, grace, righteousness, mercy, longsuffering, compassion, and forgiveness to rebel protesters are all summed up in His goodness. God is good.

“The Lord is righteous in all His ways and kind in all He does” (Psalm 145:17).

GOD ALWAYS LEADS US IN THE RIGHT PATH BECAUSE THAT IS THE ONLY PATH GOD EVER WALKS.

This is not the time to jettison the leadership of your Savior and Lord. This is not the semester of life to stop learning how to love first and love most.

God understands how you feel and why. God will not come at you with a nightstick. God will not suspend you from His discipleship school.

God encourages you to sit down and talk about your feelings. He already knows, but it is good for you to hear your thoughts as you protest to God. Those are the moments you realize how foolish it is to protest against the One Person who knows what is best for your life.

“The Lord is good to everyone; His compassion is intertwined with everything He does … Each generation tells the next what glorious things God does…Everyone will talk about how good God is” (Psalm 145:4-9).

God’s goodness is unquestionable. God overflows with goodness. He has not failed to be good to you and all those who protest against His ways.

God’s goodness has no selfish motivation. God is good to us without expecting anything in return. God’s goodness always exceeds what any of us deserve.

God is good. God never changes. Let our protests end in peace.

Let’s get back in the classroom and learn how to love first and love most.