Hope During a Time of Despair

Dr. Elton Trueblood was a Quaker philosopher and theologian who abandoned the prestige of
the chaplaincy at both Stanford and Harvard to finish his career teaching at Earlham College. Many years ago Dr. Trueblood visited the college where I was employed, and I had the privilege of interviewing him for a local television program. It has been many years since I thought of that brief encounter, but while recently looking for inspiration for a speech, I noticed his book "The Idea of a College" on the shelf and began to peruse it. These words jumped out at me: "Now a college, whatever else it may be, is a conscious effort to avoid the decay of civilization and to make that civilization worthy of permanence... Ours is an exciting job. We know full well that we are in a race with catastrophe and that civilization is in jeopardy, but we are fortunate in that there is something that we can do about it. We can deliberately create little islands of hope in the midst of a century of despair. We are doing what we love most.

Those words are as relevant today as they were 50 years ago. There might have been a time in my 35 years in higher education that I would have chalked some of that rhetoric up to simple hyperbole but not anymore. All one has to do is read a newspaper or watch the television news to see that Trueblood was and is spot on about being in a race with catastrophe. He also had it right that in the midst of challenging times institutions like Missouri Baptist University are an important part of the solution to America's problems.

The 800 students who graduated this spring got more than a "book" education. They also hopefully absorbed a worldview that challenges them to use that education to remake man and society in the image of God. At the root of many of our current economic problems is the idea that making money is the only thing that matters. In fact, the philosophy as expressed in the words to a popular song "I want it all and I want it now" pretty much sums up many of our problems. We want our graduates to be financially successful, but we also want them to use the tools we have given them to serve their communities, professions
and churches. Hopefully, we have helped them develop a philosophy of life that defines success as more than the accumulation of material wealth.

Higher education, like almost every other institution, has taken its lumps. There are those who contend that endowments are too large (ours is very small); recreational facilities are overbuilt (we have a 30-year-old gym with special rules for volleyball because the beams are so low); faculty work part time and make large salaries (ours work 50-60 hours a week and teach overloads and take on additional responsibilities to make a livable income); and tuition is out of control (our tuition ranks among the lowest among private institutions and we discount it on average around 40 percent). Much of the criticism is aimed at a few elite institutions and ignores the 3,000 or so small independent colleges and universities that focus on teaching and are the backbone of higher education. Throughout this magazine, you will see that MBU is doing well and we are doing what we love, preparing students to be servant leaders in a world that is desperately in need, an "island of hope in a century of despair."