Little Big Things

Well it's good to see everybody this morning. I know this is a busy time of the year for all of you with papers that are due and homework that hasn't been done and is yet to be done. And I don't think the weather, as much as we appreciate it, makes life much easier. Does it? When you look around and see the way it looks outside, you would kind of like to be out there. Now I understand that. I get a peek outdoors every once in a while and I feel the same way about it, but it is a closing time of the year so I suppose we must just get on with it. 

Some of you may remember that last spring I spoke to chapel three times, and the theme each time was one of embracing paradox. I would like to follow up on that theme again today, and talk to you on the topic of: "Little Big Things." In particular, I would like to talk to you about three "little big things," first of all chapel, secondly dancing, and third pornography. But of course as a teacher, I have to lay some historical and conceptual framework for that, so you'll have to forgive me for a few minutes. 

In the last few months we have spent a lot of time on campus in a group called the New Millennium Commission talking about the mission of Greenville College. Now I admit that for you, and even for me, talk about the mission of the college is not something that you do every day. But we have been talking about it and we have had a number of panel groups, including a student group which have helped us to think again about what our mission really is. Now we are coming to the conclusion, and will be taking to the board a proposal for a mission statement that you see overhead that "Greenville College transforms students for lives of character and service through a Christ-centered education in the liberating arts and sciences." 

You may not know that our first President, Wilson Hogue, from the very beginning said, "that education for character will be our motto." Education for character is really about who we are inside. So we are concerned here not only with education that will help you to do service, but an education that is an education for helping you to be a certain kind of person. I think most of us know that character is not typically formed by those two or three big decisions that we make in life. Most of us know that character is formed by those thousands and thousands of little decisions that we make every day, every week, every month. Doing is important and we at Greenville make no apology about the fact that we believe we equip you to go out into the world and to do. In particular we equip you to go out into the world and serve. 

We believe that we provide an education that gives you, not just preparation for one career because I don't know if you are aware of this but most of you will go through six careers in a lifetime. Instead we give you an education that equips you with transferable skills that will move you from one to the next, and an education that helps you to think about whole problems and tackle problems in an integrative way. We think that's the best way to equip you to go out and to serve, to go out and to do. So we make no apologies about that side of the education in the liberating arts, liberation from a narrowness of training. 

But on the other hand, we are very concerned about liberation and liberating education in the sense of helping you to become a certain person inside, and that's a little harder. It's harder because in our culture, in the United States today there is so much emphasis on what we do. So when we say that we educate for character and service it's easy to get off onto the service side and not emphasize the character side, and yet as Wilson Hogue said, "our motto is education for character." How does one educate for character? Well some of you have heard me talk about this before. In fact, some of you have probably heard me talk about it so much you wish I wouldn't talk about it anymore. 

You have heard me say that character development is really not a whole lot different from physical development, and every one of us knows how you develop physically. If you have been part of any athletic team, you know how it works. The coach doesn't just say to you, "Well now go out and run as many laps as you feel like running." The coach doesn't leave you too comfortable. If the coach isn't stretching you a little bit, you are not going to grow physically, or as we sometimes say it "if there's no pain, there's no gain." 

Now character formation and character development is no different. Have you ever thought about that? I mean you know how physical development works. So why shouldn't it be true for character development as well. If you aren't being stretched, if you aren't experiencing a little pain in moral and intellectual matters, then perhaps your character is not developing. Of course a good coach knows that if it's only stretching and there isn't any support and nurture, then the development is not going to work either. So we hope with our faculty that when it comes to character development for you, and intellectual development, they are not just giving you pain. I hope they are giving you some pain, but we hope that they are also giving you support and nurture too. Because a good intellectual and moral character coach understands that principle. 

At the beginning of the year, I gave a little speech on the Exodus, maybe some of you even remember it over in H.J. Long, in which I said this pilgrimage of development and character is not unlike what happened to the people of God who left Egypt. Do you remember this story, and how they went into an uncomfortable situation in order to follow the calling of God into the Promised Land. Likewise, in one sense each of you is involved, not only in a sort of an athletic or physical development kind of analogy in your character development, but also in a pilgrimage, which we talked about at the beginning of the year. 

Well it's hard to believe, but here we are at the end of the year now and I want to, in a sense I suppose, without any guilt trip, ask you to take a little bit of a self examination on how you have done in your character development over the course of this year. Before I do that though, let me give you a little bit of a historical survey. 

The philosopher, Aristotle, had some things to say about how it is that character is developed. He said that, "character arises as we behave in certain ways, as we engage in certain activities." Aristotle believed that character is formed as we form habits of behavior in ourselves. He said this, "Thus in one word states of character arise out of like activities. This is why the activities that we exhibit must be of a certain kind. It is because the states of character correspond to the differences between these. It makes no small difference then whether we form habits of one kind or another from our very youth. It makes a very great difference or rather all the difference." 

And someone else you have heard of C.S. Lewis wrote a book called Four Loves. If you have not read it, I encourage you to read it, especially those that are thinking about marriage. In the book C.S. Lewis says in effect, that it's tempting to suppose that the feeling of love comes before the behavior of love. But in fact he says, that one way to learn to love is to behave in a loving way toward someone and then the feelings of love come along. 

You have heard the old expression, "Love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage," (not a very good singer sorry about that). Actually they may have it backwards, love and marriage go together like a carriage and a horse. In other words marriage comes comes first and love comes second. You know the old generations maybe didn't have it so wrong, they understood that if people are committed to each other in a relationship and behave in loving ways towards one another, then love arises out of that. In other words if you want to shape yourself inside in character, in this case a "loving character", as Lewis puts it. Maybe the way to do it is to engage in certain activities that are loving activities. 

Another friend of mine, Dallas Willard (some of you know him) has written a number of books. He is a philosopher out of USC in California, and wrote a book called The Spirit of the Disciplines. In this he describes what a discipline is. Discipline in this case is maybe just another word for habit. And he says, "what is the point of the discipline of habit?" He says, "that a habit is what we do in order to make ourselves into the kind of person that God can actually do something, in a way that he couldn't of done had we not developed that habit. Disciplines are things we do that help God do things in us that he couldn't have done otherwise." 

Listen to one more person that we are familiar with, the Apostle Paul. In Philippians, the fourth chapter verses eight through nine says, "Finally brothers, and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. Whatever you have learned, or received or heard from me, or seen in me, put into practice and the God of peace will be with you." It seems that Paul is saying that if we put these behaviors into practice, then we will become the kind of person Christ calls us to become. 

All right, end of the historical and conceptual foundation. What are some of the activities on our campus at Greenville that provide us with opportunities of character and virtue development? What are some of these "little, big things?" 

Well, first of all we might talk about chapel. I think that right here, right now this is the biggest classroom on campus. Chapel IS the biggest classroom on campus. This is not a church. I mean the building is sometimes what we would call a church building, but this is not a gathering of the church. If it were, we would have some babies who would have to make noise. We would have to have some older folks and we would have to have a variety. This is kind of a gathering of the little finger or maybe the index finger. We are all very much alike in here. Although I have to confess that I am not a whole lot like you, I am a whole lot older, A LOT older. I feel it every day. But we are not a church here. 

This is the biggest classroom on campus, and so as a result, what we do here is not just to be tailored to what the people attending want to do. Now that wouldn't even be true in a good church. You don't just do what the parishioners want to do. A good pastor leads the congregation. But even more so here this is the biggest classroom on our campus, and so we expect it won't just be what we want to do. Instead there is a curriculum, there is something in mind, and there is teaching that needs to go on. 

Let me just mention a couple of aspects of this environment as a classroom. First of all, the question of announcements in chapel. Now I know that some of you think that, "oh, Mannoia, he is just such an ogre, such a mean guy." He came in here and said now you are just not going to have announcements because he doesn't like it and he's no fun. Well, you know I wish it were that simple. Actually, let me explain why I think that at least on one day a week, there should be no announcements....and maybe I am wrong about this. Maybe we can talk about this and you can convince me that I am wrong. But let me explain why I feel the way I do about announcements in chapel. 

At least on some occasions announcements are fun and they are a tradition at Greenville. They are actually helpful for communication of information and I understand all that. But you know one of the virtues that I hope we learn is the virtue of learning in our character to be the kind of people who can feel deeply, can feel deeply. Now what that means is we have to learn to become vulnerable. We have to learn to open ourselves emotionally, and to be serious as we listen. If for example you had a friend who was very tender to you physically and was maybe rubbing your back, or doing something very comforting to you, you would relax. What if in the middle of doing that they punched you right in the chest? Now how would you feel about that right? Well you know you would probably say, hey get out of here! But if they did it regularly how open would you be to allowing yourself to be open to that person physically? 

You know what I am saying? Now if that's true physically, let's ask about the same thing emotionally. If we want to be the kind of people who can feel deeply, then we have to be sure that we don't put ourselves in situations where when we are emotionally vulnerable or even aesthetically sensitized to the beauty of something that we don't then put ourselves in a position where in that mood we are suddenly punched emotionally or aesthetically in the chest. 

You see, now let me give you an illustration, and you may or may not agree. I was watching "Schindler's List" a few years ago on television, and I will never forget how I felt as I was groaning over what I was seeing. Then we had a commercial break and the Energizer Bunny was running across the screen. Now I think that that's obscene! I think it's obscene because it causes my emotional, aesthetic and even spiritual sensibilities to be calloused. You know if you get hit too many times in that situation you will build up layers of insensitivity. This may all sound far-fetched to you. But the point I am trying to make is that I don't like it when I am led to be open, and led to feel deeply about "Schindler's List," and then all of a sudden I see the Energizer Bunny because I think it builds up these callouses and it doesn't allow us to be emotionally and aesthetically sensitive, and therefore our character is not developed and we fail to gain the benefits of such sensitivity. 

Now I am not saying that when we have announcements in chapel they are always the Energizer Bunny in the face of "Schindler's List," there are days when they are certainly appropriate and it fits. But I just want us to be sensitized to the fact that there is an appropriate juxtaposing of certain things and sometimes they don't go together. In fact they don't go together NOT just because it's "improper," or somebody's idea of what's improper but because it has an effect on us, and keeps us from developing. Okay enough about announcements. 

What about behavior in chapel? What about things like noise? What about things like hats? Well, we know that those are pretty much cultural things. Whether you wear your hat in chapel or not, I mean sure in my generation you never would do it, but today it's not the same. We know that those symbols change, and the level of noise that is tolerated, maybe those things change with time and culture. That's not the point. That's a little thing, but the big issue is our opportunity to cultivate and develop the virtue of respect and the right of learning to respect. And how we do it and the ways in which we do that are really not particularly important. The particular rules we use or the guidelines that we use are not the issue. 

We DO happen to have some that have typically pervaded our culture. I am not interested in those particular rules, but what I will ask you is, are you taking advantage of the little opportunity to do something big in your character and that is to develop respect in some way. What special thing do you do to cultivate that attitude of respect? If it's not taking your hat off, if it's not being quiet, then what do you do? And if you don't do anything, then I guess I would ask, "Are you missing a little opportunity to do something big in your character?" Let me give you an illustration here too. 

When I was in college, I attended a church in Boston called the Park Street Church. The Park Street Church is about 250 years old or pretty close I think. They were part of the Revolution. They stored gunpowder in the basement and they call it the brimstone corner for their role in support of the Revolution. Now in that church there are just long, long histories of people that have worshiped there for twenty generations, well maybe not twenty, but a lot. I remember the ushers when I went to church there the first year as a freshman. I watched them come down the aisle and you know these guys were wearing morning coats. I mean like tuxedos. And I thought, "Oh man these guys are really stuck up." I was in jeans and I had hair down to my shoulders. I said, "Boy these guys gotta get with it." So one time after I had got to know one of them, I said, "Why do you guys wear morning coats? Isn't that a little stuffy? You think God cares?" And you know the answer the one guy gave me was interesting. He said to me, "You know when I come to church, I want to do something special. I want to set aside the day in a special way. I want to honor God, I want to respect God, and so I want to wear something, which shows that this is a different kind of day and a different kind of place." And for this he says, "I wear a business suit every day. And so for me to show respect would mean that I have to do something more then that." I suppose he could have said he had to do something less then that and wear jeans, and maybe that would work too. But the point is that he was aware that here was a little opportunity to so something, which would help him to affect a change in his character, to help him to learn the meaning of respect. 

Remember Aristotle says, "if you are going to change and cultivate your character there has got to be some activity, some behavior, something that you do to help you," and Dallas Willard says the same thing, and the Apostle Paul says the same. So when it comes to chapel, these are "little things", they really are. I mean you aren't going to be damned for eternity if you don't do these kinds of things. But there is a big issue involved and it has to do with character. So if you are interested in the development of aesthetic and emotional sensitivity and you are interested in cultivating the attitude of respect in your character, then you might want to ask what are the little things that can make a big difference in your life in regard to chapel especially. 

Secondly let me say a few things about dancing, and I could talk about alcohol here too. I think there are a lot of people that feel that this whole business of dancing at Greenville and our rules that say you are not supposed to do it on or off campus in association with a formal Greenville function; and you can't associate the name of Greenville with dancing; and a lot of people feel well, you know this is just such petty legalism. It is just such petty legalism. I mean after all Christ drank wine, I suspect Christ probably danced, and you know you are absolutely right. In one sense dancing and drinking are "little issues", they really are "little issues," but they are "little big things" too, and why would that be? 

Well, even in our lifestyle statement we differentiate between Biblical principles and community decisions, and these are "little things" because they are not really Biblical principles. It doesn't say in the Bible you aren't supposed to dance. In fact if it says anything, it says you are supposed to dance. It doesn't say in the Bible you aren't supposed to drink alcohol. I mean we know that good people [in the Bible] do. Christ even made great wine for one of the parties, come on, right? The Bible doesn't prohibit those things, but in our lifestyle statement we differentiate between Biblical principles and community commitments, community decisions and that's an important distinction to make. It's not my purpose then to defend these particular "little things." It's not my purpose to defend the "little thing" that the Greenville College community has agreed that we won't dance in formal Greenville functions. It's not my purpose to defend the Greenville position that we will not drink under any circumstances. 

Now if I were to try and defend those--and I think a defense can be made, although I don't know that it's overriding--but if I were, I would say things like.....well you know in regard to dancing one does have to beware of situational temptations we get ourselves into. And boy, with alcohol you don't have to read too many newspapers to see the problem of alcohol on the campuses of America. So I think there are things to be said there, but the fact is that that's not my purpose. The particular choices of which rules we have, as a community here is not the main issue. These have characterized some churches for over a hundred years, but a lot of you just aren't even members of a lot of those churches. So you see in one sense the question of dancing and the question of alcohol is a "little issue." 

I think frankly these things are changing, and it wouldn't surprise me that if in a very short time, the question of dancing for the Greenville community will be changed. And that we will not only be able to dance off campus in Greenville functions but maybe dance on campus at Greenville functions. That is not the issue that I am concerned with at least today, and I understand your impatience about that kind of thing too. It seems like these things hold on for a long time, don't they? 

But my point is that these [still] are positions taken by our community. It is a community that we have all freely chosen to belong to when we came here whether its faculty, staff, or students. We have agreed to this, we have signed our names to a lifestyle statement, and so the big issue is really whether you will use the "little things" to allow you to cultivate in yourself certain virtues, for example the virtue of integrity, the virtue of keeping your promises. Now that particular virtue is very, very important! It's the foundation of a marriage, not the love and the emotions, that's great to have, not the sex, that's also great to have, but the foundation of the marriage is the commitment that you make to someone else, and that's promise keeping and that's integrity. 

So you see the issue, the big issue here is whether we are going to keep our promises to a commitment we have made to be a part of a particular community. Never mind whether we think the little rules that the community has decided are exactly the right ones or not, or whether they will change or not. The issue is integrity and commitment. 

Another "big thing," another virtue that's involved is cultivating the virtue of being willing to submit your individual rights to that of a larger group. Are we willing to set aside what we individually want to do for the benefit of a larger group, that's a virtue. 

Now you may say, well that doesn't sound like a virtue to me, it sounds down right anti-American. Well it probably is, but that doesn't make it any less a virtue. To submit to the good of a larger group is foundational for the commonwealth, for the possibility of an orderly society. If we are not willing to submit to a larger group and set aside our own individual preferences, then our culture is going to suffer too. So this "little thing," dancing, is a case of where we have an opportunity to cultivate the virtue of integrity, and to cultivate the virtue of submitting our will to that of the larger group, and to become people of character in the process. 

Now Christians shouldn't have any particular problem especially with submitting to the larger whole because we are certainly given the example in Christ himself in Philippians and the "kenosis" passage, in which he empties himself, gives up his right to be God, and becomes instead a servant. We understand that and in fact working and living in the body of Christ means precisely to put others ahead of ourselves. So the whole idea that we would choose freely to submit to the principles of a community be they Biblical, or simply community decisions, is not unchristian, but its something that we as Christians understand very well. 

So the question then is will we use these "little things" to help us in the "big issue" of developing character of integrity, the character of submitting to others. Now let me give you an example of this. Saturday night I flew back in, in time to go to the Junior/Senior Banquet. It was a great event! I liked the room. It was very intimate, it gave us lots of time to talk and walk around, and chat ahead of time and we even got to see some good art downstairs. Carl, you and your staff did a great job. It was super, and I enjoyed the music. For those of you who aren't juniors or seniors, Scott Alberici was doing jazz. In the course of the evening I saw the dance floor and I thought to myself ok, what if dancing begins here, what am I going to do? I had my options in my head already and a couple did come forward and began to dance. So my wife, Ellen, and I just left. 

Now you may say, oh boy, that was a shoddy thing to do. I didn't leave that night because I thought dancing is criminal, or dancing is dirty, or what horrible people these people were. I had three options; I could have stayed and ignored it, but for me to do that given my commitments to the community here would have been to lack integrity on my part. Now I could have confronted the people, but under the circumstances it would have been unfortunate, it would have been disruptive, and it wasn't necessary. And my third option was to leave. So here was a little case of where it seemed to me as though the demands on me in this "little" instance were to keep my eyes on the "big" issues. 

Finally, let me turn to pornography, and let me just talk about pornography in a couple of areas, first of all films and movies. Now Greenville doesn't have any rules about attending R rated movies. I attend R rated movies. Now there are some people who have objections against R rated movies in general, and I understand that there are good reasons why one would want to be careful. What we have agreed in our community is that we will avoid questionable entertainment. We will avoid questionable entertainment, and we will avoid those things that would diminish our moral sensitivity. Diminish our moral sensitivity, sounds like the Energizer Bunny again, doesn't it? We will be thoughtful about this. 

So when it comes to films, I don't think the issue, again, is whether it's an R rated film. The question is, are you cultivating the quality of discrimination, the ability to make moral discrimination judgments? And one way of testing that might be [to ask yourself] this, "Have you ever walked out of a movie?" Now, if you have never walked out of a movie, then either you are a very good prophet of what the movie is going to look like, you read all the best reviews, or you don't have much by way of discrimination. But the "big" issue is are you taking the opportunity to cultivate the virtues of character that can arise as you do these "little things" every day. 

Finally, pornography on the Internet. The problem here, of course, is exacerbated by the fact that we now have a wonderful wireless network, and you can take your laptop anywhere...anywhere. For men it is typically a problem of looking at pictures of naked women or half-naked women, or whatever on the web. For women it is often being involved in inappropriate intimate conversations in chat rooms where sometimes women will develop a bonded relationship and sometimes travel to visit someone they have never met. There is an emotional danger there. Every week I get a printout and it is called the "Border Manager Report." This report comes to my desk and in this book (fortunately it is not too fat), are listed by student, faculty member, and staff member all of the websites that each of you have hit that was judged to be "objectionable" by an outside group. In some cases it is only a hundred [objectionable "hits"]. In other cases it is as high as eight or nine thousand in a week. So I can see your name and I can see the nine thousand sites listed, www.sexplay.com, etc., and how many times you hit that site. Maybe it was five hundred, maybe two hundred, maybe thirty. 

Now when I read that list every week, it breaks my heart. Why? Well in some ways it is a "little thing," but in another sense it is a "big thing" because trust me I understand the power of sexual desire. I understand the power of sexual desire for good. I like sex. You can ask my wife..... because she is a little more modest than I, she might not answer. I understand the power of sexual desire for good, but I also understand the power of sexual desire for tragedy. So when I read the list, I think of the potential for tragedy, so in one sense it is a "big thing." 

We do not block your access to the Internet here at Greenville; some schools do. Blocking it takes the temptation away, and it strikes me that there is no stretching, there is no growing that can go on there. Now maybe that is the right thing to do and I am not saying that it is wrong to block. But here we choose to monitor because we think it provides teachable moments. It provides opportunity for stretching. It provides "little" things that can help us in "big" things, but only if we as administration take it seriously and hold you accountable. And only if you on the other side, respond to those circumstances with the attitude that this is a "little" thing that I can turn into an opportunity to develop in a big way, an important way in my character, and in this case, of course, it is the characteristic and virtue of self-control. So, we do not block, but the issue, the "big" issue is cultivating the character of self-control, and it only works if we follow through. It is a "little big thing." 

Well, that is really all I wanted to say this morning. In each of these cases: chapel, dancing, and pornography, the choice is how to respond to each of these "little" opportunities for growth in each of these six virtues that I have mentioned will actually make all the difference, as Aristotle says in the formation of character. For over a century Greenville people have been people of character, so I am hoping you will seize every "little" thing and make it one more opportunity for stretching and the growth of your own character, which of course, is a very "big" thing for all of us. 

Will you bow your heads with me in prayer.

President V. James Mannoia, Jr.