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.