How I Became a Humanist #7: Dan's Death

Dan was a member of our prayer group.  I didn't know him well, but we prayed together every week. We also confessed our sins to one another....

Joe, myself and a few others had just come back from a Skillet concert.  As we drove towards Barbier parking lot, we noticed several cars parked haphazardly around Dearborn Commons.  Through the window of the building I could see people quivering and hugging.  They looked to be crying.  Joe parked his car in Barbier and I headed over to Dearborn Commons.  There had been an accident.  Some of the students from the school had died.  Rochester College is small enough that all of the students tend to know each other - this is especially true of the students who live on campus.  You get to a point where you can recognize a person from half-way across campus, in the dark, simply by observing their gait.  Students from small liberal arts colleges will understand.

Ferndale/Hoggatt Halls and Dearborn Commons

Seeing one's own mortality in another's death affects everyone differently.  All the students and faculty were moved by the event in their own ways.  I'd had some things happen in my life over the last year or so that made me believe that following God as a Christian was the only thing that really mattered.  With Dan's death, I took religion to a whole new level.  Within about a month of Dan's death, I'd changed my major to religious studies/communication.  I began spending all of my spare time studying religion and doing spiritual things.  I read the Bible cover-to-cover three times over the next year.  This doesn't include the readings I did for classes or sermons.  It also doesn't include the readings I did with whatever young woman I happened to be dating.  Yeah, I was a hot date.

This was all happening at about the same time Emanuel's House was being born.  I was surrounded by people who were experiencing similar things.  It all fed on itself.  When the next semester hit and I began taking Bible, theology and church history classes, I went from being a sub-par student to finding myself with over a 3.0 GPA.  Soon after I was on the Dean's List.  This was a big deal for me.  Academic achievement was not a concern growing up.  The truth is, I didn't care about it even then.  I just happened to love my studies so much that an evening in the library was anything but a chore.

Like this Bible is highlighted, mine were always highlighted with comments written in the margins.  

Over the next three years, several things grew out of my religious intensity and my studies.  At first, I became something of a Charismatic Christian.  I began to ditch most of concern for Church of Christ doctrines, minus the sacraments and a preference for taking the first century Christianity seriously.  I became obsessed with biblical studies, Church history and with understanding the various expressions of Christianity.  This curiosity eventually led me to study both philosophy and other religions.  I'll write about all of these things and their affect on my faith in subsequent posts.