An Open Letter to UNC Students: Recanting Carolina Way Bashing

Dear UNC IV Students, Past and Present,

During my five-year reign of terror as an IV staff on campus at UNC, I regularly dismembered the UNC cultural artifact known as "the Carolina Way." I am hereby repenting of said dismemberment, with significant qualifications.

"The Carolina Way" is UNC-speak for all that the university holds dear: academic achievement, service, justice, and social and relational polish. It is the myth of the perfect UNC student. It is the super-sizing of the impossible self.

In Biblical terms, it is the attempt at self-redemption and self-justification. It is an an attempt to find meaning and ultimate purpose without reference to God, His cross, or His resurrection. It is an attempt to fill the God-shaped void in our hearts with a Carolina-blue Superman or Superwoman.

As such, it is, of course, sin. And I saw it wreaking havoc on many of you particularly during my first four years on campus. I saw it ruining your sense of peace, over-running you with anxiety and frenetic activity--and I saw how it pushed you more onto your own flesh and hard work than towards Christ.

And so, of course, I pushed back against it. Hard. The Carolina Way became an easy pinata for me to take a stick to and thrash in an effort to correct the death that was at work in your lives. And I think that the corrective was important and good.

But my last year at UNC, I began to wonder if I over-corrected. And so I backed off on bashing the Carolina Way. And here today, I want to recant and suggest a better alternative. I want to suggest that the arm of the Lord is not too short to save and redeem even the Carolina Way.

Because of course justice, academic rigor, service and healthy social interaction are not bad things. They are good things that are in need of Jesus to intersect them and bring fullness of life through them.

And Christians across the centuries have displayed these attributes and worked their butts off to bless literally billions of people in the name of Christ: apostle Paul, Augustine, William Wilberforce, and in the last 75-ish years Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gary Haugen.

As long as the Carolina Way vies for your identity, affections and final purpose, it's death. If the Carolina Way goes through the lens of the cross and the resurrection of Christ it has potential to bless many people.

So thanks for your grace and forgiveness for your over-correcting former staff worker. I hope and pray that many generations of UNC students might graduate to bless many near and far-away neighbors in the name of Jesus.