Higher Education: Far from Christianized

How might universities that are affiliated with a Christian organization, or “Church,” apply the values enunciated and illustrated in the gospels in ways that distinguish such schools as specifically Christian? Do academic administrators at colleges and universities that are formally affiliated with Christianity apply the preachments by Jesus in the New Testament, let alone ask the question? At most, the question, when asked, is usually answered in terms of increasing financial aid, but in the gospels Jesus is not oriented to programs, but instead to interpersonal relations, specially as bear on the marginalized or outsiders in general—the proverbial last being first and most people who regard themselves as first, as last. How might faculty members who delimit their application of academic colleagues to scholar who are on the same faculty, hence at the same college or university? An unlikely example of a Christian values being applied by a professor at Yale, a university whose privileging of exclusivity and thus exclusion is well ensconced (and known) can be contrasted with the organizational culture at the Roman Catholic Church’s official university in the United States. Any cleric administrators at the Vatican who regard the Protestant denominations, or sects, as instances of compromised Christianity might want to take note of the contrast between the Catholic University of America and Yale.

Prime facie, the Catholic University would naturally be assumed to be saturated with Christianity and thus with the value that the gospels’ Jesus places on universal benevolence as the essence of human love, whereas Yale (and Harvard) would be supposed to be diametrically opposite. My years of experience at both of those Ivy League universities supports such a conclusion, for the faculty and non-academic managers whom I regularly encountered both as a student (and then visiting alumnus) at Yale and a visiting research scholar at Harvard seemed to relish excluding people deemed to be inferior or outsiders even if they had a formal affiliation with the university. Treating some insiders as if they were outsiders has been ensconced in the organizational cultures of both Yale and Harvard.

So when Kenneth Minkema, director of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale’s divinity school, taught a seminar on Edwards at the university’s rare-book library, I, as an alumnus auditing the course, was stunned in 2025 when Minkema favorably answered the request of a poor, local woman as she happened to pass by the seminar room in the library. “Yes, you are welcome to join us,” the professor told her. She did, and in fact asked a decent question at the end of the two-hours. Obviously, the university codifying Minkema’s compassion into a university open-door policy would not be practical even just in terms of seating, but as a genuine, specific act of compassion for a humble outsider who relished learning (Margaret happened to attend many visiting lectures on campus, as they were open to the public), the Yale professor applied his Christian faith in real time and quite practically in his vocation as a college teacher. Coincidentally, I was on campus that term doing research on the relation between self-love and Christian love (caritas) in Pierre Nicole’s essay on the topic, and was incorporating Edwards’ stance on the sin of self-love. It is indeed possible to take leave of a narrow self-interest that is encapsulated by an exclusionary organizational culture and spontaneously reach out to an outsider in humane compassion that does not hurt the person emotionally.

What I encountered for a week while I was at Catholic University of America after having been invited by its new president to do my research there (I was by then retired from teaching) was antipodal to how Minkema responded to Margaret at Yale. Even though the librarians at Catholic University knew that their head boss, the president of the university, had invited and approved me to be in residence that semester expressly to do academic research and write, and even though the university library’s holdings were modest, the librarians refused to allow me access to online books and articles. An associate provost told me that people who had been at the university for decades were not comfortable with the new president’s practice of inviting scholars to campus. That both that provost and the librarians, and even the university’s president himself, reneged on getting back to me on the issue of being able practically to do research, which required access to online books and articles, not so subtly informed me that I was indeed not welcome; I was an outsider. So, I decamped from the university after just a week.

Enough employees, whether academic administrators, cafeteria workers, or librarians, had been in lockstep in how they treated and regarded me as an outsider not deserving the respect that is appropriate for a scholar at a college or university that I was able to unpack my sleeping MBA degree and diagnose the organizational culture and, furthermore, to marvel at how distant it was to Christian values and praxis in the gospels.

Therefore, it is ironic that the Catholic Church’s university in America was actually so anti-Christian, whereas a Yale professor had been able to transcend his university’s culture and act on the basis of his Christian faith. In the Gospel of Mark, the disciples repeatedly miss Jesus’s points whereas outsiders, such as a woman at a well, grasp what Jesus is trying to convey. The rich man who hosts Jesus refuses to give up his wealth to follow the Son of God, and yet a meagre fisherman leaves his boat behind and follows. The Way into the presence of the kingdom of God turns the world on its head. How many “Christian” colleges (or divinity schools) have a supportive organizational culture to instantiate Jesus’s preachments in the gospels? 

Both as a student and returning alumnus at Yale, I found the culture at its “Christian” divinity school to be very ideologically and theologically intolerant, and students studying the Hebrew Bible there told me that they felt like outsiders in that “Christian” ethos. So too, the librarians at Sterling library were oriented to excluding rather than being inclusive, especially ideologically. A nonacademic library-security manager even threatened to block my access to the library because I had suggested to the librarian’s secretary that the security guards who regularly walked (noisily) through the main reading room ask loud, talkative students there from local universities to be quiet. The manager, whom I had not met in person, sent an email so hostile and accusatory that even one of Yale’s policemen wanted to “have a word with her.” Yet even after that, manager sent me another threatening email and the librarians looked the other way. Even as an alumnus, I was deemed an outsider by non-academic employees/managers. The librarians at Widener library at Harvard were no better, and relished distinguishing visiting research scholars who were still teaching (or even emeritus) at other universities from those of us who were not, as if the Ph.D. degrees of the latter were thereby invalid. 

Even in spite of the authentic Christian faith evinced by the professor of the Edwards seminar at Yale, I would say that neither Harvard nor Yale is likely to absorb the Christian way of relating interpersonally any time soon, especially toward outsiders and even insiders who are treated as outsiders, and I would say the same thing about Catholic University of America even though, unlike Harvard and Yale, greater Christian expectations apply to that university because it is formally affiliated with Christianity. Put another way, at least the faculty, librarians, and non-academic employees at Yale and Harvard are not being hypocrites, unless, however, they happen to be at the university’s “Christianity-oriented” divinity school.  

Transcending Caritas in Romantic Love

During the High Middle Ages, Troubadour poetry composed primarily in southern Europe included themes including of courtly love, which became associated with marriage. Before then, that institution was associated mostly with property and progeny rather than with romantic love. Interestingly, it was just as love was becoming associated with marriage when the Roman Catholic Church ended its centuries-old gay-marriage liturgy, which, sans property and progeny, was uniquely associated with love (for why else would gays marry?). The irony is that “modern” gay marriage in the West in the twenty-first century may have more to do with sex than love in the sex-centric gay culture of today, though obviously gays are fully capable of genuine romantic love that transcends such superficialities as lust that can be prioritized too highly at the expense of romantic love. Fear of emotional intimacy can exascerbate such misordered concupiscence. Adventurous exuberance combined with this fear need not eclipse more meaningful intimate relations. Indeed, married gays in loving, committed relationships even raise children in loving homes. Although utterly obscene to more conservative folks, such “mixed families” grounded in love warrant respect and even admiration for being based in genuine love even though emotional intimacy can be scary. This is what should be preached from the pulpit. Antipodally, the sex-centric approach to “relationships” in the gay “culture” justly warrants condemnation for being superficial, short-sighted, and utterly self-centered. Yet, whether gay or heterosexual, romantic love need not be selfish. The distinction in Christian theology between caritas and agape is relevant in making this point.

Augustine adopted the notion of caritas love from Plato’s eros (lust)-sourced love that can be directed upward, or sublimated, to eternal moral verities. Augustine replaced those with the Christian deity as the object of eros-fueled passionate love. “I pine for your scent,” Augustine writes in reference to God in Confessions. Such love “comes from below” in that it is based in human nature, yet when aimed to a high object, this kind of Christian love is rendered salubrious, yet not at all divorced from self-love. Eros is a clutching in a desire of attachment, after all. In contrast, the Christian love known as agape refers to God’s self-emptying love for humanity. This utterly selfless love is epitomized by the Incarnation in which God lowers itself to manifest in human flesh (i.e., Jesus). This sort of love is not at all of clutching or attaching; rather, agape is self-giving.

Genuine human love, even in the context of romantic love, can take after agape love rather than merely caritas. To be sure, it is not easy to practice such divine-sourced love in the context of romantic attachment. The heavy presence of selfishness is evinced in romance by efforts to control the beloved even in fits of jealousy. Monogamy in this sense is arguably more toxic than are open-relationships, unless the sex outside of the relationship involves connections (i.e., other loves) that are extrinsic to the couple, for the cost to the relationship in terms of foregone emotional intimacy is very great in such cases. My point is that egoism is alive and well in romantic love. I contend that couples can get beyond such an orientation of self-centric attachment and thereby introduce some agape-like love, which is not based on eros.

Looking out for the best interests of the beloved even at one’s own expense can be thought of as genuine rather than romantic interpersonal love. If, for example, in dating another person the affection is not mutual and the beloved is more taken with another person, then recommending that he or she be with that person rather than oneself even though this goes against one’s self-interest qualifies as genuine, mature love that does not reduce to one’s own self-interest (e.g., attachment). Similarly, if the beloved’s values are different, then recommending that he or she be with someone who shares those values is also in the interests of the beloved even though the temptation might be to convince the beloved to adopt one’s own values. The latter is obviously in line with one’s own self-interest, even though trying to change a person is ultimately short-sighted and perhaps even foolish.

How then can a person more easily apply agape within the context of romance? One way is by practicing the preachment of Jesus of the Gospels that inconvenient compassion is the way into the kingdom of God. Known as “love thy enemies,” this love, which I contend is spiritually more powerful than neighbor-love (benevolentia universalis), is applied not just at the extreme to one’s enemies, but also one’s detractors and even people who have simply but annoyingly been rude. Responding in compassion to their humanity—their human, physical and emotional needs—bypasses one’s ego, which would prefer to tell such people to go to hell. Love for others eclipses self-love. Practicing precisely this sort of compassion is I believe what Jesus preaches in the Gospels as the Way into the kingdom of God. 

Applied to romantic relationships, putting the interests of the other person before one's own instantiates genuine love, whether or not the two are married. While dating, for example, a person could put the interests of the other person first by being honest to oneself that the other person loves someone else more and thus should be with that other person rather than oneself, as painful as such advice would naturally be to give. As another example, a person could confront the other person with the need to get help for an addition, whether sexual or to a drug, even though the other person could end the relationship as a result of the intervention. Generally speaking, putting the genuine interests of a beloved before one's own self-love and romantic self-interest can be contrasted with forging romantic relationships on the basis of what the other person does for oneself, such sexually as is the case in sex-centric relationships.  

An American Proto-Fascist Presbyterian Church

Mixing religion and politics can be a dangerous business, especially if done from the pulpit and backed up by fully-weaponized police poised in a worship space at the laity in the pews, and from the front so the congregants know they are being intensely watched even as the words, “Peace on earth” are shown on the big screen directly above one of the uniformed police employees. To my utter astonishment, I encountered just this scenario when I visited a large Presbyterian church in the U.S. early in 2026. A Christian who has read the Gospels might look askance at the weaponized, uniformed police in the sanctuary who were facing the people from near the front, and the television cameramen who were standing on the stage even very close to the altar, and think of Jesus castigating the money-changers and sacrifice-animal sellers operating inside the temple.

During the piano prelude, a cameraman hangs out near the altar.

The modern equivalent to the greedy businessmen in the temple is the power-tripping, weaponized police officer staring down congregants in a sanctuary even while the people are worshipping God. To see people worshipping the prince of peace while a fully-weaponized policewoman looks directly at the worshippers from just left of the stage in front—staring at the people—is surreal. True Christianity cannot thrive in such a hostile environment. Lest any members of that Presbyterian church might consider complaining about the obvious hypocrisy, the pastor’s sermon could easily be interpreted as a warning against complaining, not just about the church, but also, and even more troubling, the government.

Just one day before my visit to the large church in a Trump-friendly state in the U.S., Iran’s Ayatollah Ali Kamenei denounced rioters, saying that they “must be put in their place.”[1] Such a sentiment is hardly surprising because Iran’s “democracy” is severely constrained to include only approved candidates for office. So, it does come as a surprise that Iran’s supreme leader went on to say, “We talk to protesters, the officials must talk to them.”[2] It may also come as a surprise that the pastor of the Presbyterian church would not agree with Iran’s leader on talking with protesters, for that pastor said in his lengthy sermon that Christians should not complain about government. To do so is to “rebel against God’s sovereignty.” Anyone who complains has an overblown, selfish sense of oneself. The pastor also urged his congregation to contact the White House’s office of religion about a public prayer for the U.S. coming up.

Because it is unclear how a democracy can endure without complaints being made about elected officials, government policy, and even laws, I contend that the pastor was advocating a proto-fascist, anti-democracy message as a religious sermon. That he lapsed in overreaching from the domain of religion to that of politics and government—a category mistake—was dangerous because he had stationed fully-uniformed, and fully-weaponized local police not only at the periphery of the building outside, but also inside the sanctuary and in front, facing the people—staring at them as they (presumably) worshipped amid the blatant show of force. 

I intentionally made transparent the latent hostility by pivoting in the pew in the direction of the policewomen because she was staring in my direction throughout the entire service, except during the sermon, when she faced the pastor. Her loyalty was clear, and this means that the pastor’s demand that the laity not complain, even though in the Gospels Jesus complains about the money-changers, is dangerous. Were he to have seen me holding my phone/camera at my chest in the direction of his hired gun and told her to harass me, she would not have hesitated to do so, and with manufactured anger directed at me. In short, the pastor’s autocratic mentality plus the blatant, literally “in your face” presence of a fully-weaponized police officer is so toxic to Jesus’ message in the Gospels that the pastor could hardly be trusted to wield such power as he did.

The policewoman was even staring in my direction through a gap between the cameraman and the camera. She probably took my sustained stance toward the screen above her as a provocation, as she was well accustomed with passive aggression. So much overt hostility in a Christian church belies its raison d'etre. 

The environment inside and outside of the church was so toxic to worship that the pastor actually did his congregation a favor by talking through almost all of the service, lest the people be put in the uncomfortable position of closing their eyes in engaging in transcendent religious experience. Outside of the building, before the service, at least two uniformed, near riot-gear police employees roamed around the perimeter while security guards were also present. It was a sight, ironically, of excess, and thus bad judgment. As I sat in a pew inside the sanctuary, I noticed two cameramen standing near the main table/altar even though the only activity was that of a piano-player, who was very good. The Christmas lights were still up, and the sight was beautiful, but unfortunately false (which is what Aristotle wrote of Plato’s theory of the forms). After a hymn was sung, just before the Creed was said, the pastor warned his congregation, “If you don’t believe in the Apostles’ Creed, you aren’t getting into the kingdom of God.” Apparently that minister had never read Paul’s dictum that without the love of compassion, even, and I would like to add, especially for one’s enemies and even rude and dislikeable people, even faith that can move mountains is for naught. Love is not primarily about belief, though that it part of it, as I discovered ironically as I was walking from the pews.

The pastor went from reciting the Creed to making a bunch of announcements of upcoming church social-events. Any sense of transcendence that the laity may have felt arising in them from reciting the Creed was instantly wiped out by the profane announcements, which were essentially advertisements. The profane turn was made complete when he urged people to contact the White House’s office of religious affairs regarding an upcoming public prayer for the United States, which was then aiding and abetting Israel’s committing of what the UN and the International Criminal Court have both determined to be a genocide. “Praying for the country” would not include praying that the United States hold the guilty accountable and extend compassion to the million of homeless, starving civilians in Gaza.

Empty pipes even during the sermon.

The pastor’s sermon came after a reading not of the Gospels, but of one of Paul’s letters to a congregation. Philippians 2:12-6 was the reading. Interestingly, it includes the expression made popular by Soren Kierkegaard, fear and trembling. These words rightly apply to a human’s reaction to the presence of God, rather than to that of a uniformed, weaponized police officer confronting a congregation inside a sanctuary. Not surprisingly, the pastor referenced his recent sermon on fear and trembling. Fittingly, in the current sermon, the minister claimed, “Paul is almost like a sergeant.” Not. Then the pastor turned to his personal dislike of people who complain. “Remember God hates complaining,” he said without any scriptural justification. Furthermore, “complaining is a type of unbelief,” by which he probably meant atheism. Then he overreached onto the domain of government—something that Jesus refuses to do in the Gospel stories. “Complaining about the government is really complaining about the sovereignty of God.” Only self-centered people who think too much of themselves complain. Of course, democracy requires criticism of government officials, their policies, and even laws. In fact, in strenuously opposing people who criticize their respective governments, the minister was advocating autocracy because under that form of government, political criticism is prohibited. 

How do you suppose the elderly couple felt about a heavily-weaponized, uniformed "off duty" police employee of the city looking in their direction at such close range? That the couple was effectively barred from complaining even about such an overt wrong goes without saying. Forget about worshipping; transcendent experience, had there been any during that service, would have been utterly untenable in the face of such a blatant show of force. Such palpable distrust of people who could be regular members evicerates the conditions that are necessary for worship.  

Consistent with his heavy-handed political ideology, which also manifested in there being weaponized police in the sanctuary, the minister's theology of grace had little room for credit going to free-will, which is why complaining can only be rooted in arrogant selfishness. His draconian theology can be likened to that of the Jansenists, who were extreme Augustinians—extreme because they believed that the Fall is so devastating on human nature that even free-will is severely warped. Redemption by the Cross is by grace alone. The use of free-will to extend humane compassion to one’s detractors and even enemies is instead totally by grace—the person deserves no credit for making the choice to help. 

As I was thinking about the pastor's theology in the church that I hated so much as I was walking in a line past pews at the end of the service, I saw a cell phone fall on the carpet ahead. Immediately, I picked up the phone and another person helped me locate the man who had just dropped it. As I returned it to him, I said to just a few—now I wish I had had the guts to really speak up as Jesus does to the money-changers in the Gospels—“I am really opposed to your church, but, here, this is real Christianity—I am intentionally returning this phone to this man to show humane compassion even when it is not convenient. I really oppose your congregation.” The few people who heard this nodded in agreement that what I was intentionally illustrating was indeed what Jesus stands for in the Gospels, and that my complaint against the brazen police presence was valid. Even though credit is deserved for my use of my free-will to pick up and return the phone—this was not solely due to God’s grace, though I did wonder about how fortuitous the phone being dropped such that I saw it first was. It was as if a supremely intelligent being sourced beyond our realm—including our domain of politics—was testing me to see if my anger at the violations in a house of worship was in line with authentic Christianity, and thus akin to Jesus’s anger at the money-changers in the temple. As in the Gospel of Mark, the word immediately came into my mind as I saw the phone on the carpet. I knew it would have to be a split-decision whether to ignore the phone out of spite for the minister and the policewoman who had been staring at me, or to be compassionate in such an environment in which I was so angered. I would even state that it is precisely in making the choice to be compassionate when being so is inconvenient at the very least that the image of God is in us, and that the proverbial Fall does not diminish that image in us. Even Augustine argued that a person’s self-love of that in oneself that is in the image of God is theologically laudable, whereas selfish self-love is a sin.

During my first master’s degree (and Ph.D. minor-field) program in religion, my advisor used to take his graduate students to a variety of religious places on weekends so we could observe religious rituals along the lines set out as a methodology by Geertz. We were to bracket our respective religious backgrounds and perspectives to focus on knowing “the other of the other.” We did so at Hindu and Sikh temples, Greek Orthodox churches, Protestant churches, and Roman Catholic churches. I’ve continued this practice off and on through the rest of my life. In visiting the anti-democratic police-state Presbyterian church at the beginning of 2026, however, Geertz’s methodology of bracketing one’s own religious view went out the window; I couldn’t get away from that church fast enough, though I did get a glimpse of real Christianity as I paused to pick up a phone on the way out.  

By chance, I was wearing blue and the man I helped wore red. I had come from a very "blue" state, and he lived in a red state. The phone returned, nonetheless, from one hand back to the rightful owner. That he was still holding his phone when the photo was taken may suggest that having his phone back meant a lot to him. That humane compassion can seep through the cracks in such a hostile environment as a proto-fascist church is a testament to the value of the principle itself. Without valuing it and willing it into praxis, belief in the Creed is for naught. 

 

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1. The Associated Press, “Rioters ‘Must Be Put in Their Place’ Following Week Long Protests, Iran’s Khamenei Says,” Euronews.com, 3 January, 2026.
2. Ibid.

Love as God Loves Us: Embodying Inconvenient Compassion

I contend that compassion is an automatic byproduct of having shut out the outside world for a time to experience transcendence in its religious sense (i.e., reaching beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and emotion). Such experience as prayer, for example, or meditation can result in a heightened sensitivity in perceiving the world, including things and other people who are in proximity. Such sensitivity where other people are being perceived can illicit compassion to them. It is the bracketing experience itself, away from our daily life, rather than what is being prayed about or meditated on that triggers the generalized sensitivity and thus the enhanced readiness or inclination to feel compassion where it applies. I submit furthermore that with some beliefs regarding how God in the Abrahamic religions views us creatures in Creation, we mere mortals can assume to some degree the perspective that, given how God is depicted in scriptures, God would or does have in watching us in our own little worlds.

Roughly speaking, God may look down at us from heaven similar to how a parent perceives one’s child, but here as a small creature doing the best that a small yet selfish created being can.  Augustine warns that applying the relation between a human father and son should not be thought to apply to the relation between the Father and the Son in the Christian Trinity. Specifically, Augustine wrote that human weakness “can only think of what it has been accustomed to do or hear.”[1] Augustine urges that “no carnal thought creep up” in thinking of Jesus’ phrase, “As the Father has taught me,” like how a human father teaches his son.[2] Thinking of the relationship in the Trinity as being akin to a human relationship would be to “fashion idols.”[3] Human weakness might prompt us to reduce God’s perception of us to seeing our weaknesses, but God’s perspective on Creation, including the created beings within it, would more likely be to see us as functioning as well as we can in our little corners of this created realm. Not even a parent looks at one’s very young child, or toddler, as being weak in trying to walk for the first time, or even the second or third time. Rather, from this analogy, I submit that God sees even human adults as small, circumscibed  beings fiddling with ourselves without situating ourselves in the wider context of Creation, and beyond. Such a divine perspective is subtle and wholistic and yet penetrating and specific. The good news is that we can assume that perspective to an extent sufficient to change our negative attitudes and emotions regarding another person, whether we deem that person to be ugly, pathetic, strange, or crazy, to genuine compassion as though a friendly demeanor were a natural end in itself.

One morning while on a local transit system’s bus, I watched with a visceral feeling of distaste as a particularly ugly woman aged about 60 years boarded, sat down, and proceeded to keep her miuth open while touching her tongue with one and then another of her fingers longer than to lick off something edible. The sight of the person was itself revolting to me and yet I couldn’t help myself in staring in disgust (though not showing my reaction). Writing in retrospect, I feel ashamed of myself. It was not that she gave the impression of being a bad person, and not yet of being mentally ill. At the time, I thought about how God manifested as the Father in Christianity might look on human beings specifically as finite, imperfect creatures (meaning in Creation), doing the best that we can. Looking at a living person from outside the created realm would change how we observe other people. This shift in perspective is difficult to describe.

In allowing myself to assume such a stance, though without presuming myself to be divine and thus superior to the woman, my attitude toward her instantly changed to one in which I saw her not as weak or pathetic. Instead, I saw her creatureliness as she tended to herself as best she could.

We all can be pitied in spite of our nasty selfish pettyiness because from God’s perspective, we look like little children rather than self-sufficient adults. Our existence is radically of fundamentally contingent rather than solid and complete. By intentionally assuming that perspective to some degree, and thus without presuming ourselves  to be like God in that respect, my anger and disgust suddenly dissipated. I did not yet feel compassion for her, but I did notice that my attitude toward the woman was then much different that that of a well-dressed Caucasian man who was eyeing the poor Black man who had just dropped his bag and was standing in the aisle close in front of the other man, who was seated. I could understand and even identify with the distaste that comes when someone enters my personal space too closely, but I was more taken with how much my attitude toward the ugly woman had changed from that of the seated man looking up at the Black man who was hiding his face in a hood.

The woman and I disembarked at the same bus stop; she used the front door while I used the back door. So I couldn’t miss seeing her walking in front of me in a way that intimated that she was suffering from a mental illness.  I would have felt ashamed for myself had I not used my free will to try to adopt God’s perspective on us. I walked faster, and thus I walked by her.  She looked at me, and, when I was in front of her, I looked back and saw that she was wearing a sweat shirt that had cartoon characters from the “Peanuts” comic and television shows that feature Charlie Brown and his dog, Snoopy.  “I like your shirt,” I said in a friendly tone that was genuine.  It was not that I thought I might get some heavenly reward; rather, the compassion seemed to arise quite naturally from me having assumed a perspective that has been attributed to God.

Thinking about how God looks down at us and then trying to adopt such a posture as much as we can as finite, hardly omniscient entities, and then staying in that posture for some time while watching another person (or persons) is not only done by grace. Our free-will in deciding to do this is necessary too, as it is for then deciding to approach rather than avoid the other person even if one is noxious, mentally ill, or just plain creepy. It is astonishing how quickly and dramatically anger, disgust, and the will to avoid such a person can change to kindness and compassion. If we are indeed made in God’s image, perhaps the esoteric meaning in it is that we are the only species that can self-consciously that can adopt a perspective and attitude as if we were looking in on creatures who are in Creation. That we can do so even while knowing that we too are creatures within Creation is itself astonishing, and this point is perhaps why we can assume such a posture only to some extent, yet even that is sufficient for the Kingdom of God to manifest within us, if only episode by episode, and then perhaps enough that habit kicks in and the Kingdom can gain some traction.

 

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1. Augustine, Tractates on John: Books 28-54, 40.4, trans. John W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church: A New Translation 88 (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 126.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

I Wasn't Supposed To Be A Writer

Ideally, a person is able to earn money doing something that matches one's authentic self. In other words, working in a field that is also passion and involves an innate talent or ability can add a lot to the happiness of a life. Many people get sidetracked, whether by greed or limited opportunities. Still other people do not know what their passions are, or have not realized what natural talents, or "gifts," could be tapped. Some people get trapped in dysfunctional organizations in which the organizational culture discourages self-discovery or is otherwise negative and even vindictive. I never thought I would be a writer, and I would not say that I have an innate talent for it, for it has taken much direction and practice for me to excel in the craft. My innate "gift" lies in seeing through societal blind-spots and wanting to present ideas that would otherwise remain hidden from general view. Even so, looking back at what I used to pretend to be vocationally as a boy, I have a glimpse of what I naturally am oriented to doing, before the contours of upbringing and school had a chance to mold me. Rousseau wrote that we are born free and yet live out our lives in chains. If so, it is worth looking at our early years to grasp what we have may have subsequently forgotten. Societal channels can cause a person to lose touch with the innate inner-being that naturally expresses its desired vocational proclivities through play, for such pretending is not dictated from outside but comes out naturally from within. In such a "pre-societal" stage, a person's passions and innate talents are those which become actualized in play, and as adults we can learn from this in a process of self-discovery that bypasses the imprint of upbringing and the wider culture, including education. In hindsight, my decision to switch from the liberal arts and sciences to business in my first college degree was reckless because this choice was discontinuous with what I had pretended to "be" as a boy. Of course, what a person does is not what one is. This lapse wherein the functional is erroneously taken to be existential is significant in that it attests to how important a career is to a person's happiness. 

Growing up, I used to pretend the large colonial house, which my parents had built on the edge of a small forest, was a school and I was either a teacher or the principal. Usually I pretended to direct a fire drill, when no one was home of course. My mother would have had a fit had she seen me opening all the doors so the imaginary students could leave the building, which was actually a house. My active imagination was by no means limited to education; sometimes I would pick up a short stick to serve as a microphone, walk out in front of the large house and pretend I was a singer looking out on the large front yard, which in my imagination supported risers filled with concert-goers. In reality, I was tasked with mowing the expansive lawn using a tractor. I used to sing Tom Jones, if you can believe it. It's not unusual, for boys to play-act. You have to be a certain age to spot the play on words just made for your edification. 

Teaching, coordinating fire-drills, and singing, and it should be mentioned through play-acting. Admittedly, being a teacher played second fiddle to being the principal, a role in which coordinating people was most salient in my playing. Additionally, I used to direct and act in impromptu short plays at my maternal grandparents' house with my brothers and cousins. It seems in retrospect that I was more interested in and even proficient at the use of power than in desceminating knowledge. I had been held back a grade in elementary school because, as found out only after a bachelors and a masters degree, the neurological mechanism that automatically fuses the two eyes together at the same point did not develop in my case. Eventually, I came to use one eye more for distance and the other for close work such as reading. Truth be told, however, I am not "hard-wired" biologically for a vocation of heavy reading and writing.  Hence I wasn't supposed to be a writer. Had I paid attention to what I had instinctively pretended when I had been a boy, I would not have continued with more study after getting the MBA. To be sure, I love ideas and theories, but other than my innate curiosity I had lost touch with what my boyhood imagination, unfettered by institutions like schools, was been telling me about my authentic passions and perhaps even what I would naturally do well vocationally. 

Besides looking back at childhood playing, a person can discover an otherwise hidden talent and or passion by looking at what tends to talk about in one's free time. Often times even off-the-cuff casual statements can be just as informative as the habits we develop in adulthood in what we tend to talk about in casual, unplanned conversation especially with strangers. 

Preaching and making political speeches could be added to my bag of tricks even though they I did not pretend to preach sermons or give campaign speeches in front of the my boyhood house. Actually, now that I think of it, I can vaguely remember speaking in front of the house; I would think out the speech (or sermon) rather than say anything out load (whereas I would actually sing). Although I was in student government and did not shy away from religious conversations with other students in college, I didn't notice the extent to which had conversations in politics and religion. To be sure, I worked on Reagan's campaign locally and was a Eucharistic Minister back then. Even so, I mentally severed all that from my studies in first majoring in botany and then switching to business. 

I did eventually get to studying theology and philosophy even though by then I knew I was paddling up stream in the mechanics of studying (namely, reading). But I was brought to those academic areas not by looking back to my boyhood pretending or even by realizing what I tended to talk about, but, rather, by noticing the trajectory of my academic studies. In particular, a seminar on comparative religions, political systems, and economic systems at Indiana lead me, still within the business fold, to fortify my knowledge of religion. Had I noticed what I had pretended as a boy and what I tended to talk about as a young adult, I would have dropped the pretense of business been free of my own constraints that were artificial rather than innate. 

Since graduating from a divinity school, I have discovered the extent to which I engage person to person in preaching the ideal of kindness and compassion, especially to one's enemy, as the main point of Jesus' message. Without love, Paul wrote, faith is naught. I suspect that many church-going "Christians" forget that, as the monopoly of attention is overwhelmingly on salvation after death predicated on true belief in Jesus' identity.  I have come to realize that Jesus' preaching is in need of being applied (rather than contradicted) in Christian congregations, and thus to Christianity itself. I recently heard an evangelical preacher distinguish being a disciple (i.e., discipleship) from being a Christian. He had the idea, though unfortunately his message did not go far enough, for he preached forgiveness, kindness, and compassion generally but left out that those virtues are especially noteworthy when done least conveniently, as to people who have been insulting and otherwise rude. "Love thy enemy" is the traditional expression, but it is of limited applicability as it does not  include people who are not quite a person's enemies. Someone steps in front of you in line for tickets and drops his umbrella. You pick it up in a spirit of helpfulness. 

Well, I have lapsed again into preaching. Although I know the value of utilizing writing to reach people, I never thought as a boy that I would become a writer. I used to be a terrible writer (and speller), so I have had to put a lot of effort into the craft to be tolerably good. Had I paid attention to what I had pretended as a boy and how much I engaged in conversations in political (economy) and religious matters, I would have utilized a means that is much better suited to me, even biologically. 

Regarding "the craft," I assiduously made appointments weekly at a university's writing center for over a year,  but only after I had graduated from Indiana University with a MBA and Yale with a M.Div. degree. I had previously gone to college at another, albeit marginal, distended, and ethically problematic university in the Midwest. Fortunately, I was able to go on to better universities to make up for the deficiencies in the courses. I qualified for a doctorate at another academically marginal and ethically problematic university, but I refused the offer. My three years at Yale in the first degree in theology (in which I studied philosophy of religion, history, and philosophy too) and an additional year of non-degree courses outdid even the previous doctoral seminars at the low-class university that had offered me a doctorate. Thanks but no thanks. It was worth it to keep my self-respect from being tinged even by association with such an institution. When I was finishing up at Yale, professor there offered me the chance to study for a doctorate in history, but I was already 40 and did not want to be a student for six or seven more years. In hindsight, I wish I had accepted that offer, though the the huge amount of additional reading would not have been good for my eyes as I was by then using one eye for distance and the other for reading. That I even considered the offer demonstrates yet again that I had lost touch with my limitations as well as what my childhood games and topics of later conversations could have told me about my innate strengths. 

Even after Yale, I was still climbing the academic tower even though it should have been obvious to me that it was not where I belonged or was wanted. I should have taken that as a hint that my natural place lies elsewhere. 

Between audited courses and 1 credit-hours of independent study, I was able to study for three years with a Harvard scholar who for twenty years had been flying weekly during the fall and spring semesters from Boston to Madison, Wisconsin to teach (and qualify for a pension) at UW. When he retired from Wisconsin (as soon as he could), he wrote me a letter in which he stated that I am qualified to teach political theory at the graduate level. I asked him to use Harvard stationary, as he still graded doctoral comprehensive exams written in other languages there and Wisconsin's flagship public university was ethically problematic; a staffer of the chairman of the state's legislative Assembly told me, "It is an open secret at the statehouse that UW is run like the mob." I had seen the sordid mentality up close, and had heard first-hand accounts by the rejected professor, who was by my time teaching at Edgewood College locally, and the chancellor (himself!) about a tenure-vote having been illegally rigged. 

Alas, I had to settle for UW stationary, but even so, that letter meant more to me than all of my transcripts put together because I finally had the close-up judgment of an excellent scholar educated and still working at Harvard that I had become an excellent scholar in my own right. "None of the faculty (in liberal arts) here are doing research on your level," he once told me when we were walking on campus to one of his discussion sections. That a full professor would lead one of his own discussion sections (graduate students almost always do that) was itself a testimonial to the scholar. I could have replied to him, "And no other professor here is leading a discussion section of a lecture class." Antithetically, an employee in the non-degree student office told me while we were walking on campus that I should feel privileged to be on that campus. "This is a taxpayer-supported public university," I wish I had replied. I could have added that I had indeed felt privileged to be on Yale's campus and felt privileged to be a Yale alumnus. Instead of thinking up such an appropriate reply, I was stunned at the staffer's arrogance. Educationally, his university was not in the same league. Both Professor Patrick Riley and I knew this; as soon as he could, he retired, taking (as his departmental chairman told a journalist) "his carriage back to Cambridge." Ouch! I too decamped from that chilly university, heading home to Illinois, where I had several decades earlier pretended to be an elementary-school teacher and a singer, and, I might add, a rather unsuccessful major-league baseball pitcher.