Here’s an interesting editorial from a “Christian” left blog. (H/T Acton Institute via Lindsay)
The author, Tad Hopp is graduating a PCUSA seminary – an extremely liberal, left-wing denomination.
He writes:
I graduated college in 2007.
[…] I majored in English, not exactly what most people consider a ‘marketable’ or ‘practical’ degree…
[…]I went to a somewhat expensive private school…
[…]I did what many students in their last year of high school do: I went to the school where I felt I was being called…
[…]I do not regret my four years at my undergraduate institution one bit.
[….]When I graduated college, I owed nearly $50,000 in student loan debt and was unemployed for almost six months before I finally found a low-paying office job.
[…]“Can’t find a job? Well, you should have majored in something more ‘practical’, like economics or business or medicine.” Yeah, that would be great…if those were the subjects where my skills and passions lie. They’re not.
[…]I felt called to go to seminary.
[…]I will graduate seminary with close to six figures worth of student loan debt.
Let’s take stock of what he’s said so far:
- he studied English, a language that he already spoke, which has one of the lowest employment rates
- he was warned by people who knew something about earning and saving money not to study English
- he went to a school he couldn’t afford to go to, and he graduated with $50,000 in debt
- he went to seminary, another subject that doesn’t pay, and added another $50,000 or so of debt
- he says that he doesn’t have to study subjects that lead to a career because he isn’t “passionate” about them
- he “followed his heart” by going to the school that he had mystical, emotional, intuitions about = “calling”
My advice to Tad at this point would be for him to take the Bible seriously when it says this:
2 Thessalonians 3:10:
10 For even when we were with you, we used to give you this order: if anyone is not willing to work, then he is not to eat, either.
And 1 Timothy 5:8:
8 But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
The Bible is giving us the goal of working. So what should we do to be able to reach that goal? Why should anyone hire us? What is working really about? It’s those kinds of questions that should guide what we study in school, and what jobs we pursue.
We know what careers have the highest starting salaries and mid-career salaries:
(Source)
Why do some people get paid more than others? The answer is supply and demand. Prices are a way of determining what is most valued by your fellow man. Business owners pay more to people who offer their customers more value. If you really want to serve your neighbor, you have to learn something they really want, but can’t easily obtain. And then you will be paid more. You can’t do what makes you happy. You have to do what makes customers happy. That’s how the free market works – you make money when you provide something of value to others. You make money when you serve others. This is something that is very hard for self-centered, feelings-driven young progressives to grasp. But it’s something older Americans all know.
More Tad:
Is the PCUSA doing anything to address this crisis?
[…]What has our government done to address this issue?
[…]I, like so many in my generation, voted for Obama…
[…]It seems to me that we’ve bought into the lie that student loan debt is brought on by the individual person…
[…]You know what I think might stimulate the economy? Automatically cancelling every single outstanding student loan!
He insists that the results of his own choices aren’t his fault. But didn’t he make the choices about what to study? Didn’t he make the choice to follow his heart? Didn’t he disregard the advice of people who urged him to be practical? Who is to blame, if not he, himself?
Tad needs to push away all his friends who told him to “follow his heart” and stick close by his friends who told him to focus on providing value to others. Don’t look for advice from dreamers, look for advice from doers. Dreamers talk. But doers have demonstrated the ability to create plans that work to achieve results.
By the way, some of you might be wondering how serious this person was about his Christianity. Well, in another post, he comes out as gay. So clearly the Bible is being interpreted in a way where feelings are overturning the plain meanings of words. People who read the Bible closely never come away with the message that they should follow their hearts.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Well, he isn’t Christian. I’m sympathetic to another victim of the “go to college and get loans so you can be rich” racket, but he is a whiner.
Pcusa denied Christ in 1972. I’m surprised they still have seminaries, as their official positions are pretty much anything you make up out of thin air.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/how-to-tell-the-difference-between-the-pca-and-pcusa/%3famp
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With all the debt he accumulated he should have taken one basic economics class (or taken Junior Achievement classes for free before he got to college). Then he wouldn’t say so many astoundingly stupid things.
Sure, moron, canceling all student debts sure would stimulate the economy. It would surely make more people want to lend money in the future, right?
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Oh, and he’s a “Christian” Leftist, so he’s being completely consistent with his worldview, where coveting has been changed from vice to virtue.
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It’s so weird that they find themselves in so much trouble due to their own bad choices, then instead of blaming themselves and their feelings-based “interpretation” of the Bible, they keep right on going in the wrong direction and expecting the world to change to make their bad plan work out. Talk about narcissism. I think the point I made about how you have to please the customer to make money is so elementary, but he doesn’t get it. In a free market, you have to serve your neighbor if you want to have some of his money.
Who is there in his life who can correct him? He just doesn’t listen to the Bible or to any good advice. My panel of older, wiser female advisers are ALWAYS overriding me and forcing me not to make stupid decisions, and holding me accountable to the Bible. It’s good to read the Bible and take it seriously. It’s good to listen to people with demonstrated ability so you can be like them.
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Sad many colleges offer rabid Lefty degrees like gender studies or special SJW ones to study how to be a good leftie and cry oppression at every opportunity! I’m grateful the college I went to while liberal like others was extremely tame compared to the ones we hear in the news all the time! No riots, protests, or class cancellations over Trump or Kavanaugh 😂 get a practical degree, not a SJW one so no one with a brain will hire you! 😂
https://aladyofreason.wordpress.com/
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People think that an English degree is actual English, but lately, it’s just leftist indoctrination. I wanted to be an English teacher when I was in high school, but I took a couple of university classes at night, and that ended that!
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I found this to be the most chilling statement in his testimony:
“I do not regret my four years at my undergraduate institution one bit.”
That is a reprobate mind, if there ever was one!
I hear this from post-abortive women, some “Christian,” all of the time:
“I do not regret my abortion one bit.”
How “convenient” to make an awful personal decision and to expect the rest of us (via government) to bail him out of the consequences of same!
I feel sorry for his parents. If I had children who were bums, like Tad, I would consider myself a failure.
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Yes. You would think that people – even non-Christians – would understand enough about sin to recognize sin. But here we have people claiming to be Christians who don’t even know rebellion when they are destroyed by it. So sad.
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I just finished The Human Advantage, by Jay Richards. You would like.it. One of his running themes is that people who focus on creating value for others and creating goods and services that benefit others will be best poised to prosper in an information economy. https://www.amazon.com/Human-Advantage-Future-American-Machines/dp/0451496167
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He is so good on the big picture of economics! I learned a lot from him.
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Life shows that people who live the Ten Commandments prosper in this world. If liberals had common sense, they could see that fact. How in the world can this person go through seminary without seeing that. He needs to see that he needs a Savior.
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It’s PCUSA
They’re not really Christian.
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My pastor always said, before you do anything, COUNT THE COST. Clearly, this person didn’t count the cost.
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Well, Christ also exhorted us to be wise.
Paul exhorted us to be wise.
The Book of Proverbs has a running track on wisdom.
Am I repeating myself too much?
(Of course, the Bible mentions that debt is unwise and that one should have some serious thought about whether or not to get into debt and how one is going to repay the debt.)
So this guy decided to go to (enumerating mistakes)
1) assumed you NEEDED a college degree to get a good-paying job
2) attended an expensive PRIVATE college [he went to Austin College, PC(USA)]
3) probably full-time and with little assistance (i.e., not a good student and/or no financial aid for lower-to-middle class families)
4) amassing $50k in debt (i.e., a pretty significant amount)
5) majoring in something that is common and doesn’t have much value
6) then doubling down by going to seminary (Master of Divinity, San Fran Theological Seminary),
7) with little to no financial aid
My parents aren’t Christians and to properly honor them, I gave them my reasoning for choosing seminary (Master of Divinity) vs. what they thought I should be getting (M.S./S.M. or M.B.A.).
Even my dad pointed out, once I had made my case, “Don’t get into debt to get that degree.” I promised him, “I will only do this part-time, only when I have the money to take the class.”
I’m on the other tail of the distribution. Like Tad, I had little to no financial aid (although arguably, I did land a prestigious internship with my church, and as one of two official seminary interns, it is the church’s policy to take care of their official interns for up to 2.5 classes per semester as the internship counted as a half-class). I did that for two years, the length of the internship program. Like Tad, I went to a private university. Like Tad, I went to seminary a few years after graduating college.
However, unlike Tad,
I worked in high tech full-time (and this translates sometimes to more than 40 hours a week)
With my computer/technical skills,
I have an engineering degree,
I used some of my disposable income to finance my part-time seminary education.
It did take me seven years (I clocked off 18 classes/54 credit-hours in the first two years, but had to slow down). Higher level Exegesis classes and the internship took a bit of time.
I graduated with no debt and a pretty well-paying job with no gaps in my resume.
It’s pretty basic economics that if you produce more than you need, you can sell some to acquire other things (or we could go back to the barter system … I give you X, you give me Y).
If X is relatively worthless, it will take a lot of X to give me Y.
I’d imagine in this transaction:
Tad: Why won’t you accept my 25 bags of oak leaves for 25 pounds of gold? But bagging oak leaves is what I enjoy doing and where my talents lie…
Or maybe this:
Tad: “I borrowed $100,000 in the name of ‘home improvements.’ I spent the money on purchasing and shipping a large iceberg from Antarctica to water my lawn properly. Now why won’t people offering to buy my house pay an addition $100,000 that I spent?!?!?! This is predatory lending practice!”
I will admit that I did not seek after the highest paying jobs: my optimization is more on a strategic level. I seek after developing my SKILLS (technical, people, management/team-leading) including domain knowledge, keeping myself employable.
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I was blessed to have a dad who paid for all of my undergrad. I paid that forward by doing the exact same thing for my children, all of whom have strong degrees and good money management skills, and one of who took out some loans from my wife and me for seminary but has paid them back. One of my children is able to retire at 35 by living hyper-frugally. I retired at 47 to serve the Lord.
I worked full-time in aerospace and defense for 26 jam-packed years, and my companies paid for my two Master’s and PhD, except for some books. (One paid for the books too.) Except for a mortgage and some small car loans, I never had any debt, and have zero now too. I was raised to believe that if it takes debt to get something (except a house), then I shouldn’t be getting it.
A lot has changed since I grew up, but my children are proof that, even nowadays, it is possible to raise children who are not snowflakes or have a sense of entitlement. We enjoyed some fairly lavish vacations too when they were growing up, and we visited the beach at least once a year in addition to those, but we never used debt to pay for them.
I look at some of these kids today and ask “Who RAISED you with such a sense of entitlement?!?”
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” I was raised to believe that if it takes debt to get something (except a house), then I shouldn’t be getting it.”
YES. I actually bought my first house (new construction) with no debt, though. I had debt for my two (new) car loans, but both were at 0%.
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Utter nonsense costs a lot these days.
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I supplement my day job income (I work at a scrap metal yard) by teaching 2 nights a week as an adjunct instructor in a welding program at a community college. It’s a 9 month program, lots of free grant money, low tuition, low debt, and more job opportunities coming into the school then students graduating. Some jobs offer competitive wages and benefits, and some don’t, but the point is, you can get gainfully employed, if you want to. The school also offers 18 month programs in machinist and millwright trades with decent wages. Yet high school counselors and helicopter parents go to great extents to disuade young people from entering trades. The average millennial turns their noses up at trades. Or they want unrealistic “doctors wages” (then go to medical school!). Case in point, a few years ago, I wrote an article on training for the welding trade for the now defunct Return of Kings. Commentary from the mostly nihilistic and atheistic millennial readers was that I was full of BS, a loser boomer, a half-wit, trades were for losers, etc. etc. Figures, but still a sad reflection on our culture. If someone goes $50K into debt for a toilet paper degree, well all I can say is “Caveat emptor”.
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