BLAKE BURCHAM
Staff Writer
Reading Nietzsche has really got me enthused about service. Sometimes after I plunge into the world of the needy, I go to my room and nestle in with some hot cocoa and my copy of “On the Genealogy of Morals.” I usually dose off after a couple chapters and wake up four hours later and have the whole day ahead of me. Step Forward Day, as you undoubtedly know, starts early.
I wonder lately whether I could not make a better go of it. Nietzsche said, “During the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every profession is chosen as a means to an end but continued as an end in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent act of stupidity.”
I assert that when I serve, I should think of the person whom I am serving foremost. It is hard to imagine someone selfishly painting houses in a third-world country, but service is more complex than the act itself. It involves planning, rethinking and prioritizing.
I went to Nicaragua as a leader last year with Project Serve, a program in which Pepperdine students travel across the United States and Latin America during Spring Break each year. It was great! We painted walls, flattened a dirt floor and played basketball with the people around town. We also gave away Bibles in an impoverished community. Our general mission was to serve the needs of the community and to be cultural ambassadors. But, it is easy to feel insignificant when you are giving away Bibles with no follow-up, or to dig holes and then disappear forever. In some ways, our power to really solve problems was diffused into airline tickets and lack of familiarity with the needs of the community.
The use of financial resources is part of this. There is obvious value in serving other communities, as any participant of Project Serve will tell you. It is our prerogative to value that experience for what it is: an experience. I believe that we can enrich that experience by bringing the service closer to us, closer to home and closer to our hearts. Passion comes when we really believe what we are doing then we do it — until it is finished.
Often, I rationalize that “I got more from them than they got from me.” But is that really that great? I should do my best to make sure that they get more from me! Somehow, their lives should be better in a concrete way.
Nietzshe also said, “My formula for happiness: a yes, a no, a straight line, a goal.” Pepperdine has a unique energy for service. We should channel that energy to a clear goal, a problem to solve. As a university, we could set about fully operating a charity organization with a specific mission. To start with, we have about 3,000 teachers, business people, graphic designers, PR reps, interpreters, scientists and artists. Why don’t we unleash them on a unified goal?
To take service to the next level, we need permanence and resolve. We have a model for permanence in the San Felipe program. Students go regularly and stay in a Pepperdine-owned facility. Permanence allows us to better understand the needs for the community. We must resolve to focus on needs close to home. Los Angeles has enough needs to outlast the University. Overseas programs can address local needs as well.
For many, service is a spiritual act. Service is an expression of God’s love when done in his name. Mission work serves to communicate that love. On a hierarchy of need, many people around us lack basic needs, which make spiritual conversations secondary. Our “mission” could be to accurately and intelligently assess those needs as an institution, to bring possible service opportunities more into the conversation.
Certainly there are endless service opportunities offered by the Volunteer Center and many other organizations on campus. By continuing these projects and creating a new, unified purpose,
I hope that Pepperdine will be more involved in the true academic dialogue it is capable of, discussing the why and how of service in L.A.
As both a Christian and academic institution, we could be innovative in assessing the needs of our community and applying our human and financial resources toward those needs.
Pepperdine doesn’t have protests, it has service projects. This is our unique form of advocacy: to serve individuals. We can serve less as an “experience” and more as a “project.” Now we pause for an inspirational quote from Nietzsher: “Morality is herd instinct in the individual.”
03-24-2005