On the first day of class, Professor Bates promptly announced after all students were seated, "I want you to take out a sheet of notebook paper. Number your paper from one to sixty-six. List all the books of the Bible in order, spelled correctly. If any book is misspelled or out of order, it's incorrect. This is your first test. You have five minutes. Go."
No syllabus or proper introduction given. Role call and the Baptist-school-pre-class-prayer were skipped, so God would not bless our ignorant minds that morning. I expected a half-assed easy day of filling out paperwork and introducing myself in front of the class with Han Solo-like nonchalance. Just the ol' customary bullshit. Instead, this professor prepped me for carbonite freezing.
Thankfully, I wasn't the only one about to die. Toward the back of the class, with the rest of those who dared to defy The Criswell College's policy of "No T-shirts Allowed", happened a heated-hunt for notebook paper and sanity. The well-churched who sat up front seemed more calm. It wasn't fair. I imagined the reading order of the Bible had been tattooed to their corneas as young children, an ancient Baptist practice similar to the Anglican Church's infant baptism, performed by church elders without the consent of the child, nevertheless giving it an unfair advantage in this life and the one beyond.
These lifelong Baptists (18-24 years, from birth to present) simply read from their corneas what had been ingrained in them since childhood. And the me who sat at the back of the class, who's theological curiosity and desire to cure clinical depression through Bible College landed him on a suddenly uncomfortable chair, swiftly scribbled and scored close to a twenty. Amen.
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