0032.

So, lots of interesting things were said in sociology today.

There was one in particular I WISH I had written down, because now I can't remember. And I wanted to write about it. I'm hoping starting the blog regardless will jog my memory.

1. It was interesting to me, this morning, to realize how AWARE we are of our problems as a country. Not politically, but culturally. We know we eat too much fast food. We know we are hyper consumers. We know we use credit too much, hence debt is the norm rather than the exception. We know we tend to push cultural things like McDonald's and Wal-Mart on other nations' cultures. We know we spend more money on ourselves in one day than we probably do on the less fortunate the entire month. Yet we do it anyways.
People write about it all the time, and we complain about it all the time. No one likes being seen as a hyper-consumer. At least I don't. But we just kind of accept our identity as such and move on with life.
I don't have a realistic solution to this problem, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

2. Now, granted, I didn't read the assigned pages for today, but yesterday was a very busy day. Also I just don't like to read for homework. But part of the reading was about American culture---the effects of McDonalds, Credit Cards, etc...and how we effect other countries.
Anyways. Our teacher mentioned this thing called the "protestant work ethic." She explained that this "protestant work ethic" was the whole idea of working really hard to exhibit faith. Working super long hours for the glory of God. This is, supposedly, how the American workaholic lifestyle came to be. Only now, the faith has fallen by the way-side (what does that even mean?) and we're left with just the long hours.

Now, the protestant revolution, if my 9th grade world history serves me correctly was all about salvation by faith. A personal God. Martin Luther was all about relating to God on a personal level and not having to go through a priest to do so. But the point being, faith, not works, for salvation. Works couldn't and still can't earn salvation.
So why the protestant WORK ethic? Why were protestants associated with working super long hours for God's glory? It's just strange that it was protestant-related.
I don't know. I thought it was interesting/made no sense.

OH.
I think the thing she asked that i was forgetting was, why do we think the faith has gone/what happened to it?
That was something I wanted to really think about, but we moved on too quickly because class was over. Well, first of all, who is to say that any more people were working for the glory of God in the 50's than they are now? But assuming this theory of the protestant work ethic is true, I think people probably just got so focused on working, working, working, the drive to succeed, that they were then only concerned with the working itself and what it produced--money. Then money becomes the goal.

My teacher also said (not as her own personal opinion) that the protestant belief system allows for wealth. It's okay to be wealthy, as long as you don't make it your idol. She did say, however, that that actually may contradict many biblical principles--give to the poor, if you have something, give it away. But some believed/believe if you are wealthy, it is because God willed it so. So it's okay. Right? (No! I wanted to say. All the more reason to give it back to Him--it's not yours anyways.)

While this is good in theory, I think it's probably really hard to be wealthy and still worship God for all that He is & all that He provides. We can't grasp Him as much. I regret that fact as I and many others live very comfortably, we are blinded sometimes to how much we actually need Him. We do not have to put extreme faith in God in order to have peace that we will have another meal tomorrow. I don't know. I don't think everyone should give up everything and live on the streets. But I think it is very risky to live a wealthy lifestyle, simply because we are human. Money is tempting and we know that. We can't love both God & Money.

I need to live like I think.

This was a long stream of consciousness of ramblings remembering my sociology class today. I hope that at least some of it made sense. And I know that none of it was super novel concepts or anything, but it was just interesting that it came up in sociology.