Comments for blog.limedaley.com/post/total-church-social-involvement

Comment #2635

2010-04-08T04:41:48Z

Obviously, "Dave" and many degree-less people like him are already quite mature, or else they wouldn't be looking at a history of volunteer service in the church. If indeed maturity levels are what makes interactions different, then Dave should already have trouble relating to the uneducated - which he apparently doesn't. The only danger I see is that the uneducated would let their prejudices against the educated interfere with relations, but since he's got shared life experience with them, I don't think that will happen too often. Unless, of course, he gets all uppity about his college degree.

But for that matter, I'm not sure college confers maturity. I'd be happier saying that mature high-schoolers have a better chance of making it to college than their immature classmates, but the immature kids that make it can indulge in immaturity at college more than anywhere else, as far as I can tell. In my experience gutter humor persists just as much with the educated folks, except that perhaps they have learned where decorum is expected.

Comment #2634

2010-04-08T02:32:25Z

I don't think anyone said "unable", just that it is harder to relate to someone with whom you share fewer common experiences.

Comment #2633

2010-04-08T01:20:28Z

I'll admit that most of our friends are college graduates. But of the several that I know are not (and there are probably many more with whom the issue has not come up, so I don't know), I find I don't relate to them any differently from our college-educated friends. We have deep, meaningful conversations; we have light, trivial conversations; we have families that we care for and jobs that we work at and we all worry about the direction our country is going -- even when we disagree about what the direction should be. I remember one Easter, many years ago, when we had as our dinner guests two young men, one with a Ph.D. and one a high school dropout. We had a most wonderful, interesting, and stimulating dinner conversation. So I guess I don't know why education, or lack thereof, should make you unable to relate to people.

Comment #2632

2010-04-05T14:19:04Z

I don't really follow your first point. At my high school reunion, I found myself pretty separate from most folks - it seemed to me that the jokes and interactions among some were basically the same as they had been ten years prior, but among those that had gone to college (and in particular the schools not known for their partying) related in a different manner.

I found the same to be true at a company when I would walk down to the manufacturing floor. I was friends with some of the folks, but that was where I started wondering if everyone should go to a four year college, no matter what they studied or future ambitions, but just for maturity's sake.

Comment #2631

2010-04-03T14:00:49Z

While a degree might enable Dave to relate to professionals, it would undoubtedly make him less able to relate to working-class and marginalized people.

I would certainly hope not. This is a cross-cultural issue, and fluency in one culture should not make you less fluent in another. In fact, it should enable you to understand both, better -- as learning another language helps you understand your own native tongue. Thinking about my Swiss-American grandchild(ren), I would expect them to relate equally well with their American and Swiss countrymen. True, they will never be "all-American" or "all-Swiss," and thus not relate 100% with the purebreds (whatever that might actually mean in two countries that are each an amalgam of different peoples) -- but no one ever relates 100% with another person anyway, however close. If the man's venture into the professional culture makes him less able to understand and enjoy community with his native culture, then something else is wrong with him, not his education.

Various people disagree with me, but I think a class (and race) agnosticism is the best way to relate to people.

I agree completely, and I'm quite tired of people telling me the colorblindness is racist. The only person I've heard make a reasonable case for giving deliberate attention to such differences is John Stackhouse (professor at Regent College in Vancouver), in his On Behalf of Diversity in Academic Hiring. He says, "A case needs to be made that the mission of the academic unit (university, faculty, department) will be advanced better by having different kinds of people ... rather than having all of the same kind." Substitute "church" for "academic" and it's still true, perhaps more so. One can easily agree with that, yet disagree with the idea of focussing on recruitment of drama majors or Asians, but here's where Stackhouse got me: if a university (or a church) is already a monoculture, without deliberate effort and awareness of who we might be leaving out, the status quo tends to remain the status quo, even if in theory we are open and welcoming to all. Our IVCF chapter when I was in school so effectively excluded nursing students that they formed their own fellowship. The reason? Our meetings didn't begin till 10 p.m , and the nursing day began at 6 a.m. Ten o'clock worked for all the people who came to the 10:00 meetings, and attracted people for whom that was a good time, and thus we never thought that it might be a problem for some. Entirely unintentionally, we deprived our community of the valuable insights that might have come from a nursing perspective.