"Just Do It" Continued

Me and this guy and the wine and food pairing were instant comrades because we were both Political Science majors in college. It is an odd fellowship. Almost no one who major in Poli Sci winds up becoming an actual Political Scientist. The closest career pairing is lawyer and I am afraid that we have more than enough of these in our contentious culture, who monetize grief, suffering, lawsuits, divorce, and a ton of other social and cultural maladies, so that they can pay off law school debt number one, and then compensate themselves monetarily for working such a negative and nasty job.

I seriously flirted with the idea of going to Law School until a good and wise friend of mine asked me about a decade ago why I wanted to be attorney as I liked my job as a school counselor and that most of the people that she knew who were attorneys, if not all, were miserable. Long days of suing people is not a good way to spend one's waking hours. I really didn't have a good answer for her. She kind of put me on the stand so to speak and I had to plead ignorance.

I like how Law School teaches people to think, to be evidential, and to argue. Yet, her question had me consider the "End Game" of Law School...it was preparing me for a field of work that would, in all probability, make me unhappy. For all of the stresses of my job as a school counselor, I never have questioned as to whether I make a positive difference or not...this generally leads to a conscience that is quiet and lets me sleep peacefully at night.

After I dropped the idea of going to Law School, one that I had dreamed of since high school, I went in the direction of pursuing a Ph.D. in something more related to education. After wandering through Temple University's campus in Strawberry Square Harrisburg waiting for a play of the Milton Hershey Story (co-written by my friend Todd Klick) at the Whittaker Center to start, I picked up a brochure about Educational Psychology that listed the courses.

I was really interested in cognitive psychology (not clinical). I get enough training hands-on in human pathology day-to-day. The idea of studying it (or another related field like Counseling Psychology) was a double-whammy that would probably cause me to lose my marbles. Educational Psychology is the study of how people learn. And since learning is a big part of life, this program at Temple University in Philadelphia (they don't have the Ph.D. at the Harrisburg campus) has been very enriching.

Lawyers and Psychologists have a propensity for making things much more complex than they need to be. The jargon, although sometimes necessary, is also obtuse as to muddy meaning except for those trained in the guild. It is also the case that both professions seek not to find the most simple solutions, be these problems legal or psychological. There is a tremendous financial incentive to prolong conflict and dysfunction because such hours are billable. I happen to believe that most of humanity is selfish and how the present legal and therapeutic systems are structured, practitioners must swim against the tide of milking the cash cow dry until there is nothing left in the udder. This holds true for medicine and a most other professions, too.

It might even indict the Church. Are we really trying to lead people into biblical maturity? Or, do we want them to still be spiritual children, wowed by fancy pyrotechnics--musical, feel-good stortelling, videos--like somehow Church has to be fun like a visit to Hershey Park? Fun, in its proper place, is fine. Too much emphasis on "fun" is far worse than foolish...it is fatal.

Why doesn't the Church always "Do It?" Maybe it is easier, and more profitable, if we don't.