Kevin D. Hendricks

Al Franken vs. Bob Jones University

I don’t really care for Al Franken. I don’t really care for Bob Jones University either. But somehow the pairing is pretty funny.

Al Franken took a “prospective student” to Bob Jones for the whole tour, complete with awkward questions about how students can’t leave campus unless they’re going home or on a mission and how students can’t listen to rock music (not even Christian rock?!). It makes me chuckle.

What’s especially funny is that Al Franken didn’t think a disguise would be a good idea and that Bob Jones was as slow on the uptake as they were. You’d think they’d get jokers like that fairly often.

And anytime you talk about Bob Jones, a trip to their web site is in order.

Especially their dress code. It’s good to see that they’re cracking down on the evil of sideburns. For women there are some lovely rules about bust ease and how low your neckline can go. Thankfully they have some handy helps: Your neckline can go no more than four fingers below your collarbone. Four fingers is fine, but five fingers gets you the fiery furnace. Three, of course, is a holy number.

And Abercrombie & Fitch is outright banned, which is only surprising in that they don’t have a list of other banned brands.

The page about residence hall life is also fun. Students can’t watch anything but G rated movies. Oh, and don’t forget the mandated lights out.

I just don’t get the unending rules. I realize that they’re trying to help students live a Christian life, but I don’t think a pharisaic list of rules help accomplish that. Especially rules that have little to do with said faith (Sideburns? Seriously.).

It’s my opinion that people need a little room to sort things out for themselves. And yes, that does leave room for them to screw up. But that’s part of life. We learn from our mistakes. And if you never let me make mistakes, well, I’m not going to learn anything. Obviously you can go too far the other way with that kind of thinking, but there should be room to make some calculated mistakes.

That’s actually a business concept we talked about when I was last in L.A. As a business you should try to make mistakes when there can be a calculated advantage. Try something different and see what happens. If it fails, you learned something. But if it works, bonus.

I think the same thing applies to life. Let me watch whatever movies I want to watch, and I’ll figure out the right choices. Those are fairly safe mistakes to make. And I’ll learn a few things in the process, which will enable me to make smarter decisions about bigger, real-life issues.

Or you can just make all the decisions for somebody and hope they either stick with those rules all their life or somehow magically learn discernment on their own.