A recent Gallup poll showed that Americans’ faith in institutions had been declining over the 10 to 20 years or so, but even more so within the last two to three years. The poll, measuring positive opinion of 16 basic “institutions,” from small business to Congress, highlights the partisan divide in America today.
Education has taken a big hit, with the divide being more than 30 points apart, one group believing that colleges, especially, are hotbeds of liberal thinking. However, is it “liberal thinking” as the way news about colleges is reported.
When a small group of students protests U.S. support for Israeli policy, for instance, the headlines imply that it is the entire college. However, when someone wins a Nobel, the attribution is only to the individual rather than to the university system that created the possibility. The point of education is to ask questions. Maybe that’s the real reason for the divide. There are those who do not want others to ask uncomfortable questions because they fear what the answers might be.
Prayer for the Day
Created as sentient beings, O God, we ask questions,
But there are those who want only the old answers;
Breaking out of old paradigms, we search for new ones,
Fitting the realities in which we live.
Grant, O Holy One, that we shirk not from questioning,
And that we are not straitjacketed into old answers.
In the name of the One who always asked questions,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
Bertrand Russell, British philosopher (1872=1970)
Believe what you like, but don't believe everything you read without questioning it.”
Pauline Baynes, British illustrator, from Questionable Creatures (1922-2008)
Ask, and it will be given to you; search and you will find;
Knock and the door will be opened for you.
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds,
And for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
Jesus in Matthew 7:7-8