He's back!

The last Diary entry left you hanging a bit as Mike had been taken before the university court by one of his disgruntled professors who wanted the school shut down, and Mike arrested because she “did not feel the school was safe” if he was there. It was quite the trek and required our needing a lawyer from the wonderful Christian legal firm, Alliance for Defending Freedom. You can read all about this in our upcoming book that gathers all of the Diaries into one place, so you can get a fly-on-the-wall feel for what it is like in the modern college classroom, and I will be posting the stories here every week. Mike took two semesters off to get cancer treatment (He’s doing great!) and have cataract surgery.  Now he is healthy and happy and engaged again in battle for the minds and souls of these classmates and professors.  Here is his first day back.

First Day Back in Class this Spring 2026

He’s back! Your favorite senior college student bringing a whole new meaning to being a “senior.” Actually, Mike is “senior” twice over. He is taking senior-level philosophy courses at the local university, and he is very much a silver-haired, seventy-seven-year-old gentleman.

Mike entered the university classroom excited by the possibility of continuing to be used by God in the lives of students and faculty. He cares about them, prays for them, and studies faithfully so that he can give an account of the hope that is in him for their good and for God’s glory. He is confident that he is there in the trenches with them as a fellow student, seeking to be an instrument in God’s hands.

Mike already knew his professor and liked him a lot. He was a very personable man, and Mike believed he was sincere, even if deeply mistaken. Mike also recognized about ten students in the class from previous courses. He knew they weren’t merely indifferent toward Christianity; they were hostile. Still, they were thinkers, and they would not shy away from debate.

What Mike didn’t expect was that the first battle of the semester would be over something even more basic than religion:

Whether words mean anything at all.

(And, uh, if you’re reading these words and understand what they’re saying, you might think the answer is obvious… but not in these classes.)

Dr. Williams walked in, pleasant and ready to begin. “This is Philosophy of Religion,” he said. “We’re going to discuss different religions and what religion is.”

He then asked the class to list a few religions. The discussion moved quickly and, not surprisingly, landed on the Bible.

Dr. Williams leaned into it. “How should we think about the Bible?” he asked. Then he launched his first volley against its validity and authority.

“The Bible is not a set of arguments or propositions,” he said. “There are many contradictions in the Bible. It’s full of stories, parables, and unreasonable things. It’s not a philosophical system, so it’s not something we should use to validate our arguments.”

Mike thought, They never bother to tear down the Qur’an or the Bhagavad Gita, only the Scriptures because they are the very Word of God.

He raised his hand. “So, are you saying the Bible cannot be understood?”

Dr. Williams answered plainly. “Yes. The Bible cannot be understood and is not meant to be used as a source for philosophical arguments.”

Mike followed up. “How do you understand it well enough to know that it can’t be understood?”

Dr. Williams didn’t hesitate. “It wasn’t meant to be understood,” he said. “In fact, we can’t fully understand anything, because words are only symbols, and nobody knows the definitions of symbols fully, accurately, or perfectly.”

Then he continued, “We can’t know an author’s intentions or what he was truly trying to communicate because we did not know his culture and experience what he experienced.  Think about this. You were all born with cell phones in your hands. You come from a completely different culture than I do. I was born into a world where cell phones hadn’t even been invented. So, we can’t understand each other in a really meaningful way.”

Mike queried, “Then why are we here if we can’t understand you?”

It wasn’t sarcasm. It was a genuine question—and it landed like a hammer.

Mike then stated what seemed obvious. “If language can’t communicate meaning, then a classroom is basically pointless. The entire purpose of a class is for a professor to communicate ideas to students.”

Dr. Williams shrugged.  “That’s right,” he said. “It’s all absurd.”  He turned to the class.  “So, you see, class, you have no way to understand the Bible. There are no rules to language, so we can’t communicate truly. The Bible wasn’t even written in English. It was written in other languages, and we know that language cannot be translated in a meaningful way. There is no way to convert from one language to another in a way that we know is faithful to the intent of the original text.”

Several students chimed in, parroting the now-familiar mantra heard in many classrooms.“Yeah, translations are impossible. Words are just symbols with no real meaning.”

Mike smiled and raised his hand again. “Dr. Williams, you’re married to a French woman, right?”  Having been in other classes with him, Mike knew he was.

“Yes,” Dr. Williams replied.

“And your wife calls France from time to time and speaks to her mother in French?”

“Of course.”

Mike leaned forward slightly. “So, when your wife gets off the phone and you ask her, ‘Honey, what did your mother say?’ and she answers you in English—do you understand her? Is she telling you something untrue, or does she just make it up?”

The room went quiet.

Not hostile quiet. Not bored quiet. The kind of quiet that happens when someone realizes the slogan they’ve been repeating doesn’t actually work in real life.

Dr. Williams didn’t answer right away. For the first time, a few students looked thoughtful.

Mike pressed the point gently. “Translations are legitimate when they’re done honestly and competently. They may not capture every nuance perfectly, but they are real communication. And if we deny that, we can’t read any translated material, including the textbook translated from German that you told us to buy so we could understand this class.”

Someone muttered, “I never thought of that.”

And that was when Mike thought of something.

People don’t usually reject Christianity first. They reject meaning first. They reject clarity first. They reject the idea that words can actually say something true, because if words don’t mean anything, then no one can ever tell you you’re wrong. There’s no accountability.

The semester has only just begun, but the lines are already drawn. In the next class, Dr. Williams continues his critique of Scripture with the argument he has already introduced:

“The Bible is full of contradictions.”