Goodbye Biola and Regent

I've decided to change my Facebook profile today.

Under "Education" I dropped Biola University and Regent University from my list of schools.

I've added Colorado Christian University.

My reason for this is that after 20 plus years of regretting Biola, I've come to the conclusion that my religion would counsel me to forget what lies behind.

I've concluded that I need to press forward to the things God has for me now.

This doesn't mean I'm going to drop my four Biola friends I currently have on my Facebook page. They are worthy friends and I'm glad I knew them back then and I'm glad to be in touch with them now.

It does mean that I no longer consider myself a Biolan. I'm not worthy of the title and for me, personally, Biola is not an association I need anymore. I'm not an Eagle. I'm a Cougar.

My Alma Mater is the school I actually graduated from. That school's current form exists in and through Colorado Christian University.

Colorado Baptist University was absorbed by Colorado Christian College, forming Colorado Christian University in the fall of 1989.

I graduated from Colorado Baptist, then a branch of Southwest Baptist University, in the spring of 1989.

Merger talks happened over the course of that Spring Semester and the decision to merge was finalized before I graduated.

Thus, I am an Alumnus of Colorado Christian University. I never once set foot in Bolivar Missouri, where Southwest Baptist University is located.

But I did take two classes from CCU during the time I was away from Biola recovering from a bone marrow illness.

That combined with my graduation from an original CCU founding institution makes me a CCU Alum.

Go Cougars!

Biola and I were mismatched from the beginning. I realize now that I would have been better served in attending college somewhere else. Wheaton College comes to mind. Or perhaps Rockmont college close to home . . .

Or maybe even CU or CSU.

Regent University was just my attempt to recapture something that was irretrievably lost to me. Those graduate level classes rounded out my education, but I didn't graduate from Regent either, so I don't deserve to be associated with this graduate school in Virginia Beach.

Listing either institution as though I am an Alum of either one of them just doesn't make sense.

It is better to leave these places in my past and not to dwell on that past anymore.

My loyalty as an alum is to Colorado Christian University.

May God richly bless this local Christian University to be everything to its students that Biola failed to be for me. May all CCU students be everything to CCU that I failed to be for Biola but succeeded in being for Colorado Baptist / CCU.

And may the graduate programs of CCU grow to be everything Regent University is now.

My true undergraduate accomplishment was graduating from CBU / CCU with a "B" average and editing News and Views and Wings of Promise.

My graduation happened after "coming off the mat" from a tough ending at Biola and the loss of my best friend of the time, Rona Williams, who died in a car accident in the summer of 1988.

This was the true accomplishment. Attending Biola and Regent really wasn't.

It isn't enough to just survive a place. I did more than survive at CBU / CCU.

I pray that someday, an Eastern Orthodox University in this country will be founded to equal all the best Protestant and Catholic universities that currently exist.

Blessings in Christ, the Absolute God,
and in the Holy Trinity of which He is a loving part,

Columba Silouan