If you've never been to Bible College, you may not understand what the
Demerit System is. In Christian schools, it is a common way to enforce
the rules of the school. A demerit is a negative point against your
record as a student. If you reach 150 demerits in a semester, you are
expelled from the school and lose all your credits for the classes you
have taken for that semester. Certain lighter infractions will earn you
smaller amounts of demerits, and infractions that the school deems as
more serious will get you a greater number of demerits per infraction.
For example, if you don't make your bed in the morning before going to
class you might get 1-3 demerits (if you live in the dorms). If you are
late for class you may get 1-3 demerits, if you miss chapel, you may get
up to 25. If you hold hands with a girl, you might get 50-75 demerits
for inappropriate touching between the opposite sex. If you listen to
music that's not approved by the school, you may also get 25-50
demerits...no, I'm not kidding...there are schools that do this. When I
was in Bible College, our VP told us
that we may not like the demerit system, but someday when we are running
a Christian School, we can do what we want to enforce the rules and
we'll probably return to it after we see its value.
Well, I don't agree. In fact, after having gone through many years of
school under this system, I have come to see it as ungodly and
anti-gospel. The Demerit system doesn't promote godliness, but rather
lawlessness and hypocrisy. However, it's not the Demerit System that
needs to be ultimately changed in Christian schools and colleges...it's
the gospel-less environment of the school that mandates the need for it.
In a gospel-void Christianity that is promoted by so many schools, the
demerit system is an absolute necessity. There is no other way to
restrain the passions of gospel-less students. The problem with many of
these schools is that there are many unconverted posers that attend and
are allowed in with nothing more than a very flimsy profession of faith. Continue at
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