- Posts: 7
- Joined: Aug 11, 2018
- Thu Nov 01, 2018 10:41 am
#59943
Sharing the first draft of my personal statement below to solicit feedback from whomever. Thanks!
A friend and mentor once said, “Follow the truth wherever it leads, and you won’t be disappointed.” He was right, but one thing he neglected to mention is that following the truth will often cause others to be disappointed in you.
Midway through 2017 I had an epiphany. I was the pastor of an established, growing Baptist church, situated in a midsize Arkansas town that was in the midst of its own resurgence, and my wife and I had recently welcomed our fourth child. My MA diploma in Biblical Studies was fresh-off the press, and I knew I was exactly where I wanted to be. In that moment I realized that every aspiration I harbored was within reach. From where I was I could teach, study, lead, write, speak, or even climb the denominational ladder, if I so chose.
But instead of accomplishing any of those things, I instead resigned several months later and was unemployed for a month before accepting a third-shift production job. I went back to school to earn an undergraduate degree that counted and started studying for the LSAT. Every priority shifted, and goals changed overnight as my wife and I buckled-down to rebuild our identity from the ground up.
I turned in my Baptist credentials and went pagan. Actually, we joined the Eastern Orthodox church, but the gossip lanes that run in-and-out of Baptist circles prefer it the other way. The chasm that exists between Eastern Orthodoxy and Southern Baptist theology is composed of a myriad of differences, but for brevity’s sake I’ll only share one, to illustrate. The climax of the Baptist Sunday morning service is the sermon; a lecture the pastor gives based on a passage or passages from the Bible. In Baptist thought, teaching from the Word of God is paramount. In contrast, an Orthodox Sunday morning service culminates in the sharing of the Eucharist, in which all members drink and eat from the common cup and bread which we believe is mystically transformed into the very essence of Jesus Christ himself. In Orthodox theology, this is paramount because it is taught that Jesus is the Word of God made human. You don’t have to tell me that we’re weird, we already know that. Even the Baptists think we’re crazy, and they believe Jesus is going to ride across the sky on a white horse with a sword in his mouth.
The fall from “local rising-star” to “probable false teacher and threat” was quick and irreversible. Somedays I wish I could go back and choose the safety of sameness; dogma is easier and more comfortable than critical reasoning and the change it brings. But I can no more do that than I can return to my mother’s womb and be born a second time. Some thresholds can’t be uncrossed. Once a Baptist pastor renounces the beliefs that underpin Protestantism, there’s no way back.
The way forwards leads to law school, towards a new vocation and way of life. As a pastor my job was to take old teachings and share their meanings, relevance, and application with my congregation. Law is not so different, the writings in question are just newer and more prone to change, often suddenly and drastically. Both require copious amounts of study and research; a good pastor is also a good student, and I believe this is true of a lawyer as well. I am inclined to any career that allows me to spend a lot of time with my nose in books of sort or stripe.
But there’s more to it than simply a natural bend towards the practice of law. I am passionate about the practice law as a pursuit and a discipline, but my desire to pursue law as a career also stems from my desire to be a good neighbor and to works towards a common flourishing. The field of law gives me the best chance to experience vocational success and, by extension, the best chance to use my vocation to accomplish the most good for my community.
This is where I would like to delve into the specifics of how my chosen branch of law will empower me to that end, but I can’t. I don’t yet know what my particular focus will be. I’ve spent the past several months wrangling whatever work would help pay the bills and scrapping tooth-and-nail to earn my Liberal Arts degree and put myself in a position to begin law school next fall. Taking it one step at a time has gotten me this far, and so I’m content to let this particular decision wait in line.
I’m not so vain as to think that I’m the only one who could have walked the path I’ve chosen. There have been many more before me and there will be many after. Forsaking family traditions or trading religious convictions is not a new phenomenon, nor are mid-life vocational shifts. But I’m not sure you’d find many instances where they converge as completely as they have for me. The paradigm didn’t shift as much as it shattered, but I can use the same hammer that broke it to put it back together again.
Because that’s what truth and reason are, oftentimes. They’re like a hammer. In the wrong hands they’re used as a blunt instrument to beat opponents into submission or to relentlessly pound dogma into someone’s head. But when used correctly, reason and the conviction it brings is the kind of tool that can break-down deformed or deficient opinions and ideas and then re-build them correctly; piece by piece, thought by thought. Now that I’ve spent a year clearing my life of a lot of deficient structures, I’m ready to rebuild it again. And if my hammer should take on the form of a gavel, then so be it. There are worse hammers in the world.
A friend and mentor once said, “Follow the truth wherever it leads, and you won’t be disappointed.” He was right, but one thing he neglected to mention is that following the truth will often cause others to be disappointed in you.
Midway through 2017 I had an epiphany. I was the pastor of an established, growing Baptist church, situated in a midsize Arkansas town that was in the midst of its own resurgence, and my wife and I had recently welcomed our fourth child. My MA diploma in Biblical Studies was fresh-off the press, and I knew I was exactly where I wanted to be. In that moment I realized that every aspiration I harbored was within reach. From where I was I could teach, study, lead, write, speak, or even climb the denominational ladder, if I so chose.
But instead of accomplishing any of those things, I instead resigned several months later and was unemployed for a month before accepting a third-shift production job. I went back to school to earn an undergraduate degree that counted and started studying for the LSAT. Every priority shifted, and goals changed overnight as my wife and I buckled-down to rebuild our identity from the ground up.
I turned in my Baptist credentials and went pagan. Actually, we joined the Eastern Orthodox church, but the gossip lanes that run in-and-out of Baptist circles prefer it the other way. The chasm that exists between Eastern Orthodoxy and Southern Baptist theology is composed of a myriad of differences, but for brevity’s sake I’ll only share one, to illustrate. The climax of the Baptist Sunday morning service is the sermon; a lecture the pastor gives based on a passage or passages from the Bible. In Baptist thought, teaching from the Word of God is paramount. In contrast, an Orthodox Sunday morning service culminates in the sharing of the Eucharist, in which all members drink and eat from the common cup and bread which we believe is mystically transformed into the very essence of Jesus Christ himself. In Orthodox theology, this is paramount because it is taught that Jesus is the Word of God made human. You don’t have to tell me that we’re weird, we already know that. Even the Baptists think we’re crazy, and they believe Jesus is going to ride across the sky on a white horse with a sword in his mouth.
The fall from “local rising-star” to “probable false teacher and threat” was quick and irreversible. Somedays I wish I could go back and choose the safety of sameness; dogma is easier and more comfortable than critical reasoning and the change it brings. But I can no more do that than I can return to my mother’s womb and be born a second time. Some thresholds can’t be uncrossed. Once a Baptist pastor renounces the beliefs that underpin Protestantism, there’s no way back.
The way forwards leads to law school, towards a new vocation and way of life. As a pastor my job was to take old teachings and share their meanings, relevance, and application with my congregation. Law is not so different, the writings in question are just newer and more prone to change, often suddenly and drastically. Both require copious amounts of study and research; a good pastor is also a good student, and I believe this is true of a lawyer as well. I am inclined to any career that allows me to spend a lot of time with my nose in books of sort or stripe.
But there’s more to it than simply a natural bend towards the practice of law. I am passionate about the practice law as a pursuit and a discipline, but my desire to pursue law as a career also stems from my desire to be a good neighbor and to works towards a common flourishing. The field of law gives me the best chance to experience vocational success and, by extension, the best chance to use my vocation to accomplish the most good for my community.
This is where I would like to delve into the specifics of how my chosen branch of law will empower me to that end, but I can’t. I don’t yet know what my particular focus will be. I’ve spent the past several months wrangling whatever work would help pay the bills and scrapping tooth-and-nail to earn my Liberal Arts degree and put myself in a position to begin law school next fall. Taking it one step at a time has gotten me this far, and so I’m content to let this particular decision wait in line.
I’m not so vain as to think that I’m the only one who could have walked the path I’ve chosen. There have been many more before me and there will be many after. Forsaking family traditions or trading religious convictions is not a new phenomenon, nor are mid-life vocational shifts. But I’m not sure you’d find many instances where they converge as completely as they have for me. The paradigm didn’t shift as much as it shattered, but I can use the same hammer that broke it to put it back together again.
Because that’s what truth and reason are, oftentimes. They’re like a hammer. In the wrong hands they’re used as a blunt instrument to beat opponents into submission or to relentlessly pound dogma into someone’s head. But when used correctly, reason and the conviction it brings is the kind of tool that can break-down deformed or deficient opinions and ideas and then re-build them correctly; piece by piece, thought by thought. Now that I’ve spent a year clearing my life of a lot of deficient structures, I’m ready to rebuild it again. And if my hammer should take on the form of a gavel, then so be it. There are worse hammers in the world.
