#014 Travis Walker [Class of 2008]

 Hello all,

My story isn’t as powerful or as touching as many of the stories here. I wasn’t female, so I didn't notice instructions of how women “ought” to behave. I’m not gay, so I can’t speak to that experience either. I’m not from a minority group, so I never felt like my culture was ignored in class. I grew up a white, straight, male Protestant and I accepted the framework of Western, Christian culture implicitly. I didn’t notice how others were treated or felt, and that alone speaks volumes. Rather practicing empathy, I was taught argumentation—and I loved it. 

During my time at the Oaks, the emphasis fell very much on believing the correct doctrine. Faith, and the Christian experience in particular, seemed to revolve around holding the right ideas. Fortunately, my dad always encouraged me to “work out my own salvation with fear and trembling” and so I questioned many of the accepted doctrines around campus. To be honest, I enjoyed being an intellectual rebel, but that was where my rebellion stopped. I seldom pushed the boundaries, beyond a senior thesis of “Christians should be pacifists,” which sadly stirred people up far more than it should have. My dad pushed me to question everything, the Oaks provided a framework to think rigorously, but eventually I discovered that religious indoctrination and truly free thought are incompatible. You can’t have a mutually transformative conversation as long as someone is convinced they hold “the truth.”

Because my personal memory is terrible, I’d rather not focus on anecdotes, but rather on how the Oaks influenced me in the decade since I graduated.

Intellectually, I found myself mostly prepared for a liberal arts degree. I’m not sure if I could say the same had I chosen a more rigorous field of study, but I seldom had difficulty with my Theology degree. In fact, the Oaks formed a large reason why I wanted to major in Theology as I had already invested so much time and energy into thinking about doctrine and (theoretically) serving the church. I felt like God had called me to the ministry and my upbringing was all part of his sovereign plan.

Fortunately, I never became a pastor. While the Oaks had trained me intellectually, I wasn’t ready spiritually. Perhaps it couldn’t have been avoided, but I became an atheist after reading Lucretius, a Roman poet and philosopher. In retrospect, even my un-conversion had an Oaksy flavor to it: discovering your faith is absurd after realizing a first century Roman held a more coherent worldview than you. Yes, even the Romans had good reasons to question Christianity—how much moreso 20 centuries later. Losing my faith was one of the most painful things that ever happened to me. I had lost my sail and guiding compass, my very reason for being. Perhaps if I had a more relaxed approach to religion, my experience would have been different, but, partly as a result of an Oaks education, I desired to make religion the very grounding point of my life. 

After I became an atheist, a pastor back home said that my apostasy “made sense” because I never was a true Christian in the first place. While it wasn’t someone from the Oaks who said this, I imagine that some might have felt the same way. In fact, I hid my atheism from people for a long time because I didn’t want to be judged as an apostate. I don’t hate Christians or view my own religious upbringing with disdain. While the Oaks’ instruction indoctrinates, it also adequately provided me tools to deconstruct false ideologies—I just never thought that the worldview I would be dismembering would be my own.

After years of reconstructing my worldview and sense of self, I’m in a much better place. It’s taken a long time to unlearn the harmful things I was taught and strengthen the good. And the Oaks provided many good things. I felt genuinely loved and cared for as a person by most of my teachers. I hope that many other alums can also envision the face of a teacher who loved and cared for them. Not only the teachers, but many students and staff also cared for me. The unique care I was shown doesn’t happen at every school, so I am extremely grateful for this.

Attending the Oaks can be polarizing. The model definitely isn’t for everyone, and, as some people noted, better effects can be gained with different educational models. What the Oaks excelled at was making Christian soldiers, which meant cutting off everything irregular and training for intellectual combat. To some, training Christian soldiers is a badge of honor and to others, deplorable. I’m not sure where exactly I land on this question because The Oaks crafted so much of who I am. It’d be hard to tell my life story without it.

Proverbs 22:6 says, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” Well, as they say, the proof is in the pudding and many of us have departed from the way we were trained. Perhaps the training is in need of some modification?

Perhaps stories like ours are inevitable when our outcomes are already fixed beforehand. In thinking about what the ideal Christian man or woman should be, the Oaks took a very restrictive approach. Everything we did, the way we dressed, the way we sang, the way we thought, ALL of that was more or less determined beforehand. This environment was deemed to be free because there was “freedom within boundaries.” Anything outside these boundaries was cut off. I feel lucky because my journey involved minimal pain, though after reading some of these stories, this clearly wasn’t the case for everyone.

It is with great love that I write to my fellow Oaksters, which is a word we’re using now, I guess. We’ve all had our own journeys, but I hope each of us can realize that a journey implies progress and (hopefully) upward momentum, not a fixed destination. I thank Natasha for creating a space where we can partially witness the journeys of others. To see through the eyes of others, if only for a moment, can be powerful and disorienting (hopefully in a good way!)

 

Peace and Love,

Travis Walker