The Blog

Hi Everybody! I am a christian teen who wishes to share his ideas on the web, and ultimately, create an online christian teen community. This blog is new, but I am hoping that you will be impacted by what I write and become a member of this online community. I have been greatly inspired by Alex and Brett Harris at www.therebelution.com and David Platt at www.radicalthebook.com thank you for reading!

Friday, June 17, 2011

Danger of the American Culture Part 3 (The Economy)


  Oh no, here we go again. The guy is going to give a speech on material possessions and that we should sell them all and give to the poor.
      You probably thought something like this as you read the title. Well, I’m not going to do that. I’m instead going to expose what we don’t need.
      There are two categories of things when it comes to material possessions. There are the necessities, and then there are the unnecessities.  This is not a real word, but here it means exactly what it implies: what you don’t need. It’s ok to splurge and get that cool sneaker or that pretty dress. But (there is always a but in these articles) these aren’t what you need to survive. You need clothes; you don’t need the latest and hottest fashions (even though society will tell you that you do). You need food; you don’t need a $10 meal, or even a $6 meal. We need different things; we don’t need the extremes of those things.
        So, ok, you are saying to get what I need and forget about what I don’t need, right? Why? I’m not saying to forget them or to not get them, I am only pointing this out t oyou. A little unnecessity may be healthy every now and then. But, the thing is, some people have more unecessities than others. What do I mean by this? I mean that there are people all over the world who don’t have the necessities and thousands in America who have not only the necessities but the unnecessities as well. One small example is the pencil. I bet thousands of kids don’t have any pencils or education, while the wooden pencils here are almost disappeared and replaced with the cool, better mechanical pencils. We here always want all the coolest clothes that cost more, and there are people all over the world who only have one set of clothing. In a graph, there are two groups. Our group (we’ll call it the American Group) is sky high in material possessions over the half-way line, which is the line that shows our needs are fulfilled. The other half, the World (in poverty), is way below the line. Is this fair? No. Can we stop it? No.
        Perhaps that last sentence confused or even shocked you. It should. Chances are, Americans won’t turn from the frivolous to help the needy. We can’t stop this, as Jesus said in the Bible, the poor will always be with you. We can help however. We can make a difference in one person’s life by giving them what they need. We can try to level out the graph. We can trim down the unecessesary, and increase others’ necessaries. We can on our graphs. The world’s graph will probably never change, we must accept that fact. But we can change our personal graphs to match God’s will for us and those we help.

4 comments:

  1. Alexandria ElizabethJune 17, 2011 at 7:01 PM

    I am amazed that you cannot stop it. I wish we could stop it. Our feelings are not going to change anything its our actions that will change things. I understand one of the things that we can change is poverty we can help others. But do we? NO. So I ask what do we have to do to make people notice that they have so much and others have so little. Messages out to people won't help it showing the love of Christ and hoping it becomes infectious.

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  2. Alexandria, you have reached one the crux of the matter, and one of the hardest jobs of a christian. How can we raise awareness?
    I just saw a movie entitled "To Save A Life". It takes place in high school, and it starts with a teenager committing suicide because no one likes him, and they all make fun of him. I wont give away the movie, but at the end it is very inspiring.
    A big problem these days for us is raising awareness, and there is no simple way to do this. This blog is committed to that, but I do not get many page views.
    Are we lacking in advertisement? If it is God's will, then shouldn't He allow people to be led to this site?
    David Platt in his excellent book "Radical" states (this is paraphrase) that we believe in mass producing. This is actually a mistake. Jesus' life is our ideal example, and over His life he committed Himself to only 12 men, 12! That's like only getting 12 people to look at your blog, but having them ask questions. We need to invest ourselves in the few so that they may get a personal relationship with God, not the many whom we leave not knowing what to do once we pursue others.
    I am not saying that bringing a lot of people to Christ is bad, but we need to make sure that at least someone invests in them, so that they know how to live as He would want them too.

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  3. Awareness is a good first step... but then it requires action, and this is where things start to fall apart. Furthermore action often leads to putting aside the values of the world in exchange for the values Christ taught... and this is anathama to many Christians. Ie, putting aside group loyalty, hierarchy, and purity as Jesus presented over and over makes for words that are just too hard to hear... but it seems unless we have our hearts on Christ first, are willing to listen, and then take action, we will get nowhere.

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  4. Great points Ron it is easy to talk about it but actually doing it is a whole other story and we often ignore this calling from God toact.

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