In retrospect… (Part 3 – “Hi Jesus”)
My journey just after high school has a lot to do with religion. So I guess I have to start there.
1997-1998
Given that I had an awesome early start to my career in IT at Oakland Schools, you’d think I’d head off to college for a computer related degree. Most people were shocked when I told them I was going to go to Great Lakes Christian College to study psychology. I had a huge thirst for apologetics and always greatly enjoyed helping friends through hard times. So it made sense to me.
In high school I was a part of two churches, one being the home church of Denny (he’s the one who first told me about Jesus) and the other being Mike’s. Because he was my best friend. I had a blast with both groups. I participated in the youth group of both (with Brandon Caroland being my youth minister at Mike’s church). One of the kids in the youth group at Denny’s church put together this massive binder of information on evolution. Specifically on how wrong it was and how the earth is young. Yep! A young earth creationist! I loved that binder and soaked up all the info I could out of it… and then I went to the internet. On the internet I discovered that 100% of that binder was easily dismissed by pesky things like facts and science. So I was excited when I was heading to GLCC to check out the college, there was a special event on evolution that day… I think by someone named Nathan? So awesome! I can go and here an educated college students findings on this stuff. Answers!
Well… that went about as good as you’d think. He spouted off the same exact misinformation the young kid in youth group compiled. I tried asking some questions… Bringing up counterpoints to things he said, but got dismissed and ignored. So that ended my spree of being a young earth creationist. But, I was pretty comfortable being a Christian who didn’t believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis.
Off to college I went. One of my strongest memories of starting college is about toilet paper. I was moving in to my new room (with my mystery roommate- who turned out to be a great guy- Benji) and I was hauling a huge cube of toilet paper in to my room. I grabbed it out of the car and ran fast… feeling embarrassed for some reason that I was bringing my own TP.
And one of my favorite memories is from just before the freshman orientation. We were told to dress nice for it, but I didn’t really have much nice clothes to wear. But, I had a huge bank account from having a nice nearly 100% disposable income for the past 3 years. I knew Jason Caroland from having Brandon as my youth minister, and Jason just happened to be back at GLCC that year. He was at Grand Valley State University for a bit, but thankfully he came back to GLCC in 1997. Jason and I had a very similar sense of humor and so we got along well from the start. We headed out to the East Lansing mall to get me some clothes for orientation… and I let Jason decide everything. I ended up leaving in khaki phat pants (you know, the kind all the ravers wear? They’re like cartoonishly exaggerated bell bottoms), a skin tight olive green stretchy shirt and a button down shirt over top of that, left unbuttoned.
Other strong memories of my first year at GLCC involves random theological debates you’d stumble upon walking around the boys dorm. People would argue over the most ridiculous things… like “If someone is on their deathbed and then accepts Jesus Christ but they die before they have a chance to be baptize, are they in Heaven or Hell?” I didn’t get it… I was of the opinion that the bible clearly tells you what to do and you should try to do what it says with all your ability. If you can’t, because you happen to die just minutes after accepting Jesus, well, that was really out of your control. It’s up to God now. But if it is in your control, don’t argue about whether or not it’s “needed”. Just do what it says to do.
The origin of my nickname: ThePet. Although my roommate was extremely nice and an overall great guy, I didn’t have much in common with him. Jason Caroland and I however got along great. I actually moved most of my stuff over to Jason’s room. Which was really just my computer and Playstation. So I spent all my time in Jason’s room and slept in my room. We talked about many things, philosophical things, silly things, theological things, music, etc… He introduced me to some great bands, like: Tears for Fears, The Cars, The Pogues and Michael Knott. It was actually a song by Michael Knott that made him decide to come back to GLCC that year: Double. So anyway, I spent all my time in his room, had all my stuff in his room, but didn’t live there. So I was always there and didn’t live there… One day Jason was introducing me to someone he had over and said something like, “This is Ryan… he… well… he doesn’t live here but he’s always here. I guess he’s our pet.” And so there it was, my nickname, The Pet.
My second year at GLCC went much like the first. Jason wasn’t there, he went back to GVSU, but Mike was. We had a room together and it was a great year of video games and music. Oh, and smoking. Come to find out that Mike really enjoyed cloves. And hey, they were nice. So we ended up smoking that year, and I ended up moving on to Marlboros even. Of course, at GLCC smoking was strictly prohibited on and off campus. As was watching rated R movies and being in the same room with a girl! So there was a small group of smokers that went for “walks”, or “drives”, or just walked down to the baseball field and smoked in the dug out.
Throughout all this time I was studying the Bible like I never studied it before. Since I was pretty new to Christianity, most of the old testament was new to me. So going through the old testament was very new to me. After my sophomore year of college I had a lot of new questions, much like the questions I had for the young earth creationists. During the summer I started hanging out a lot with a co-worker of mine and went to my very first rave… More to come in part 4.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:58 pm
i was very much a part of your first few parties, even drove your moms car home for you the first time you ever took ecstasy, that whole summer we hung out id sleep at your moms apartment, i met a lot of those friends from the first few raves, first one we ever went to was called welcome to my house, i still remember the girl with the stuffed animal wanting a hug, i was drifting away from God to at the time….. i never ended up taking anything, then you left back to glcc i dropped out and my partying days began…. HA i didnt even get a honorable mention.