thinking further

I started musing about why I felt like I had to find community and why it's such a big jump to think about creating community. I think I'm very much a product of my environment. North American society avoids responsibility like the plague. We're very good at talking about rights, we all have rights coming out of our ying yang - the UN Rights of the Child, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But unless someone is responsible to deliver on those rights, they are meaningless. And if people take responsibilities seriously, there is no need to discuss rights.

But we don't like responsibility. Video games manufacturers taking responsibility for the influence of their games on fragile morality? Absolutely not? Clothing designers taking responsiblity for how their advertising promotes eating disorders? Forget it! The most powerful are very quick to say, "It's up to the parents" - while at the same time creating a world where the dollar is all that matters and parents are robbed of their time with their children in order to survive economically. And when it comes to parents, responsiblity in some people's eyes gets very distorted. Parents are not only responsible for what they do for their children, they are considered responsible for the children's actions (e.g. wanting to punish parents for the actions of their children)

We are all affected by our culture. I think a major challenge for Christians is to move past a rights-based way of thinking to a Jesus mindset of serving, giving up ourselves and doing to others what we would have them do to us. We are responsible for our influences, but not others' behaviour. I fear that we do not necessarily critically examine this.