Wednesday, October 30, 1985
Page 4
Daily Nebraskan
1 1 ft u
NU support drive
needs input inrom
tiidente9 faculty
T7 SUPPORT NTT."
ASUN and the UNL Alumni Association have
sounded a battle cry against Gov. Bob Kerrey's
proposed $5 million NU budget cut.
In a campaign against the cuts, the alumni
association is distributing "I support NU" bumper sickers.
ASUN senators also tried to draw support by passing out
smaller "I support NU" stickers at Saturday's football game
against Colorado.
Public awareness and support will solve NU's budget crisis,
and ASUN and the alumni are doing their part.
But they can't win the battle alone.
Students, parents, faculty members and other alumni must
voice their university support to friends, relatives and, most
importantly, state legislators.
"I support NU" is a call to action. If students and faculty sit
idly by, relying on the "big names" at the university our
administrators and representatives to express the concerns
)f the entire campus, NU will be poorly represented at the
statehouse.
No matter how many times NU President Ronald Roskens
denounces the reductions at budget committee hearings, state
legislators won't help NU unless more students and faculty
show their own concern.
' State senators noticed the lack of input from UNL students,
said Kelly Kuchta, chairman of the UNL Government Liaison
Committee.
UNO and Wayne State have sent students to the state
Capitol to react to the recommended budget cuts, Kuchta said.
But few UNL students have talked to legislators.
' The key to saving the university from irreversable damage is
communication between students, faculty and legislators.
People who don't have time to visit the Capitol should call or
write their senators. Pester them. Keep reminding them of the
university's plight.
Face to face conversations with senators are the most effec
tive, Kuchta said. Students can talk to legislators anytime,
whether they are in their offices or on the floor of the
Legislature.
The ASUN Office, 1 15 Nebraska Union, can provide senators'
phone and office numbers, as well as background on the
proposed budget cuts.
Verbal communication is important, but even students
wearing "Go Big Red" sweatshirts who mill around the Capitol
will show their support for NU.
The time for passive complaining is over. Aggressive action,
such as rallies, marches or simple one-on-one visits with sena
tors will determine the future of the university.
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ALL MATERIAL COPYRIGHT 1985 DAILY NEBRASKAN
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Several evenings ago I was privy to
something of a bull session among
a group of high school students. I
wasn't really eavesdropping it was
simply one of those animated conversa
tions that no one in the general area
can avoid overhearing.
Curiously enough, the topic of this
bull session was church and church
attendance or rather the lack
thereof.
Us
Jim
Rogers
As the typical conversation in such a
rhetorical arena is wont to go, the ses
sion began with one of the students
exclaiming how pitiable it was that her
mother was forcing her to go to church
the next morning. Another girl then
chimed in about how she just never
went to church. Each succeeding dis
cussant attempted to express a slightly
greater disdain toward church.
The conversation naturally picked
up a life of its own and began growing
in vitriolicity. Finally, one young woman
gushed with typical high school exub
erance, "I really just hate church."
Well, the conversation continued for
a short time until some other event of
interest broke up the group. But the
image of the young woman exclaiming
with such casual glee, "I really just
hate church," became a source for con
tinued meditation on my part.
Now, some fashion I can understand
the girl's sentiment. She felt her church
was boring and irrelevant, and, being
caught up in the emotion, she perhaps
overstated her case.
But on the other hand, irrespective
of how much I can emphasize with the
young woman's perspective, the seem
ing frivolity with which she proclaimed
her loathing for a local manifestation of
the body of Jesus Christ her purely
unreflective blasphemy is a senti
ment that I simply cannot fathom and
which is profoundly grieving.
Yet I believe that this young woman
expressed a sentiment consistent with
the general American attitude toward
worship: Namely, worship exists to
serve us, and, absent a totally success
ful fulfillment of that goal, it is to be
discarded along with hula hoops, troll
dolls and other unfashionably outdated
toys.
Richard Quebedeaux rightfully ob
serves in his recent book "By What
Authority" that "contemporary religion
in America is. . . marked by a lack of
deep and fulfilling personal relation
ships an absence that provides yet
more evidence of its superficiality. This
deficiency is the direct consequence of
popular religion's de facto self-cen-teredness
that maximizes self-awareness
and self-development and minim
izes self-sacrifice for others. Modern
American religion, very simply, doesn't
care about doing anything for God. It
only wants to use him."
Similarly, a recent Gallup report
entitled "Religion in America: 50
years," confirms the notion that most
Americans have a "self-centered kind
of faith," one in which more people
worship and pray because "it makes
me feel good" than because it ex
presses a "need for repentance or the
need to do God's will regardless of the
cost."
This self-centered posture toward
Christian communion has caused num
berless more honest fellows to cast a
somewhat jaundiced glance in the
direction of the church, believing it to
be full of hypocrites and that glance
is not necessarily undeserved.
Nonetheless, I think that the young
woman's expressed attitude toward
church is both a cause and an effect of
religious superficiality. She was the
hypocrite, I believe, for being content
only to flippantly loathe the church
(while affirming some sort of belief in
God, perhaps even considering herself
a Christian) because it didn't satisfy
her "needs," and all the while never
first venturing to express the mercy of
Christ in service to His body unde
serving though it may be for such a
blessing. But then, that is the gospel
after all, isn't it?
All in all, however, the time for such
casual hatred of the church is ending,
and this young woman along with
our society as a whole must honestly
face up to the consequences of a cul
ture attempting to live without Christ.
Sober evaluation, rather than flip
pant dismissal, then is to be called for
because, as Italian Christian social
critic Romano Guardini accurately
argued, "As the benefits of Revelation
disappear even more from the coming
world, man will truly learn what it
means to be cut off from Revelation."
As a result of the emerging self
conscious unbelief, the unbeliever,
wrote Guardini, "will cease to reap
benefit from the values and forces
developed by the very Revelation he
denies. He must learn to exist honestly
without Christ and without the God
revealed through Him. . . Nietzsche
has already warned us that the non
Christian of the modern world had no
realization of what it truly meant to be
without Christ. The last decades have
suggested what life without Christ
really is. The last decades were only the
beginning."
Rogers Is a UNL graduate student in
economics and a law student.
Bookie operates on fellow worker
A few weeks ago, something really
scary happened to Tom, who lives
in a sleepy little Illinois town.
He was flat on his back in a hospital
room. His belly was aching, because
the doctors had made some extensive
repairs of his plumbing.
He was groggy from the pain-tf&lers
and the stress of the surgery, so he kept
dropping off to sleep.
When he opened his eyes, he saw a
man standing at the foot of his bed. At
first he wasn't sure who it was. Then his
eyes focused.
And Tom groaned. The visitor was a
bookie and loan shark. And Tom owed
him money.
It's an old story. Tom works in a large
factory in Sandwich, 111., and lives in a
nearby farm town of about 1,200. He
happened to discover that one of his
co-workers, a $5-an-hour forklift opera
tor, was also a bookie.
So Tom bet on a baseball game. Then
he made a few more bets. And he was in
for a couple of hundred. Hoping to get
even, he bet again and again.
0
" . ii f- j
Mike
Royko
It didn't take ton Inner hofnro Tm
was on the hook for $1,200. For a small
town factory worker with a wife and a
couple of kids to support, that's a
serious debt.
Tom asked for time to pay. The
bookie said his time was up.
The bookie told Tom that it would be
unwise for him to welsh. He said he
worked for people "up north," meaning
Chicago, and they were unforgiving.
While Tom was pondering his pre
dicament, he got intestinal pains, the
doctors found problems, and they
operated.
Which takes us to Tom and his vis
itor in the hospital room. As Tom des
cribed the conversation:
"He asked me how I was. I told him
not too good. Then he told me he had to
have the money.
"I told him I was very sick and I
couldn't pay him right now."
"He told me he was very sorry about
me being sick. But he said that busi
ness is business and if I didn't pay, they
would reopen my incision."
And he got even more scared when
one of the bookie's colleagues phoned
the hospital room the next day and
Please see ROYKO on 5
