It wasn't the first paradox...
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It wasn't the first paradox Kristin had encountered and, no doubt, would not be the last. She was a college freshman, and like so many others in her class, she was struggling to make sense of her education in the face of street gangs, homelessness, environmental pollution, injustice, racism, age discrimination, sexism and all the other manifestations of humanity's inhumanity. To be enrolled in the College of Humanities to study all that was rich and good and beautiful about human existence seemed almost pointless. Having grown up in a Christian household, Kristin was sensitive to the many socioeconomic and political ills that plagued the daily lives of too many persons in an economic system that required a certain level of unemployment to function. Because she took seriously the biblical admonition to "live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ" (Philippians 1:27a), she was torn between getting a college education and doing something more real, something more immediately constructive. Her attitude horrified her parents who tried to reason that she could do more good with an education than without it. In some ways she sensed that they were probably right; but her heart wasn't in the college scene, not after her experiences the last two summers at youth work camps. She could go into the inner city for a week as a volunteer and help paint a building or serve food in a soup kitchen. And then she could leave. But the people she'd been there to help could not. They were stuck in the squalor, the crime, the fear -- left to disappear in the margins of society. Would a college degree a few years hence really help her to make a bigger difference? These people were hurting NOW. -- Fannin
