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Here’s How College Radicalized Me
I spent some of grade school and all of high school in a Texas suburb. I went to Catholic school for a few years, and while I loved the message of Jesus Christ, I strongly disliked the people around me.
I noticed the kids with rich families didn’t get in trouble as often. The families who contributed to building new wings of the school were almost never suspended. I didn’t feel particularly wanted there. I did have friends and I wasn’t alone unless I wanted to be, but I didn’t feel comfortable.
In religion class, we were selected “at random” to read the prayer for the day. In four years, I was “randomly selected” once. I watched the rich kids get selected time and time again, and I always felt something sick in my stomach.
It wasn’t fair — And what’s more, what we learned in science and religion class didn’t match up. This was back when Texas Catholic school still taught the basics of evolution. They presented all of the information, and just let us deal with the existential crisis.
Either way, I saw it didn’t match up. I started to question. I was happy with the idea that the Bible was a kind of allegory. Some teachers agreed with that approach, and others didn’t. Others wanted us to take the Bible literally. I could feel this conflict, even though it wasn’t explicitly stated. Their answers varied.
