Where Are All The Rational People?

I recently agreed to help a small Lutheran college in Selma, Alabama start a Criminal Justice program. When I say a small program I do mean small. Their enrollments over the past few years have averaged in range of 600 total students for the entire college.

This alone has been a culture shock for me, considering that I last taught in classrooms at the University of Alabama where we had almost 500 majors in Criminal Justice alone, much less the entire school. The rest of the culture shock came when I arrived at the college and found that most of the students, mainly minority students, came from less than stellar high schools and were ill prepared for college. I say this not to denigrate the students because most of them are eager to learn, but have been ill prepared compared to what one might find at a major university.

This has left me with far too much time to think and to peruse the world outside of my own. Being that the school is based in the Lutheran faith is a first for me, and puts me at odds with my own faith, which runs hot and cold. Those who have read my posts before know I try to write in a straightforward way, meaning that you know who I am and where I stand on certain issues.  While no major changes have taken place I have become more introspective.

There is an intertwining of many of the national events, with what I face every day, along with people who have a great deal of faith in a god that I do not necessarily believe exists, at least not in the same form that they do. When something happens that is good, for example the approval of the the Criminal Justice major for the school, only the third major on the campus, the emails that come out of the administrative offices usually start off with, “To God goes the Glory.” I know, as do most of the people here, that there was a lot of hard work that a lot of people put into those proposals and I have to put things into perspective.

Please keep in mind that the Board of  Regents, as well as faculty members, interviewed me before I was accepted and I was asked about my beliefs. I gave them a side step answer by say that, “While I have my shortcomings, I lived my life by principles that would be closer to what Jesus Christ would approve, and that might make me a minority in the world of Christianity. Truth be told, I really believe that. Of course given the amount of hate, racial bias, judgement, and vitriol that is spewed by the majority of the good Christians of this day, that is not a very hard standard to realize.

Take, for example, a former student who regularly engages me on Facebook. He believes himself to be a Christian but his racial disdain and hatred for the president comes through in his Facebook posts so strongly that it reeks of bigotry. He was an average student at Alabama but I would have to categorize him as a good old boy, meaning redneck and probably Southern Baptist. Not a bad person, per se, but I knew he would not be one making great strides in his field. Time in the field of law enforcement proved me to be right.

We are currently having one of those battles on Facebook where he stated that he would argue that President Obama is not interested in serving the American peoples best interests, but instead serving the interest of Sharia Law and cronyism. This took me aback a little. The POTUS is not perfect but I have never heard any credible source even trying to link him to Sharia law, and if there is anything that I truly believe about President Obama, it is that he truly cares about doing what is in the best interest of the American people. In fact I accuse this former student of forgoing his education and turning over his mind to the Tea Party. I also explained that I found it strange that while House Speaker Boehner was suing the president for taking to many administrative actions, Boehner was playing with a toy monkey for the entertainment of his grandchildren.  As he did so the US is confronting major foreign policy issues in the Mideast and the Ukraine.

Sitting back and waiting for the president to make a mistake, criticizing his every move, and waiting for failure, is called playing politics, and it’s a dirty game indeed.  Of course this has been their plan since the first day he took office. But the good Christians and the so called patriots of America have decided that they would rather see Obama fail, and thereby, America fail, than to try to help the country.

My point in this dialogue has been that the people at the school truly believe in their faith and believe that their God is guiding them forward. They are not sitting back hoping someone else will fail so they can succeed. Even though they know that I am not in lock step with them, they believe that I have the same goals in mind for the school, which I do. What amazes me is that at a predominantly black, Lutheran school we, the faculty and administration, both black, white and soundly Christian sit together to reach a common goal while others seek out and destroy any hope of success by joining forces.

It’s not that difficult for people to get to this point. Sure, we’re a small group and certainly not working on a matters related to the security or economic security of this country,  but, that is the point.  Our mission affects a small number of lives while the mission of congress and the administration impacts roughly 350 million people This, I would argue, puts the level of importance so much greater on the government to get their act together. All it takes is for people of good will and character to decide that there is something for more important than their own petty grievances.

Do I think it is going to happen? Not anytime soon, unless the Democrats win the senate, which is unlikely, and more importantly, the presidency in 2016.  The House of Representatives has a strangle hold on the country because of their gerrymandering until at least 2020 and perhaps 2024.  By then the population diversity will catch up with the Republicans despite all of their tactics.

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