Coloring our World with God’s View
Lauren Kostoff
April 24, 2009
Filed under Features, Top Stories
It’s no surprise for any of us to hear that as American teenagers, we, for the most part, want for nothing. At least not basic needs; and no, a brand new Coach bag is not a basic need. But what we fail to realize is the effect these blessings have on our own personal worldview, which ultimately affects the way we treat others, the way we think and reason, and the choices we make.
If our worldview is colored with the rare commodity of abundance, how can we relate to those who have less than enough? In Rob Bell’s most recent book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians, Bell wrote, “How do kids who are surrounded by more abundance than in any other generation in the history of humanity take seriously a Messiah who said, ‘I have been anointed to preach good news to the poor’?. . . and How does a twelve-year-old who has never had hunger pangs that lasted more than an hour understand a story about a twelve-year-old providing fish and bread for thousands of chronically hungry people?”
It’s an overwhelming question….how could we ever possibly understand what it means to have nothing when we have so much…does anyone even know the answer?
So we can look at pictures or watch a documentary on those who don’t have, we can even visit for a week on a church or school missions trip, but for any of those who have experienced that kind of “spiritual high” they can also attest that, more often than not, after we hear the heart breaking statistics, participate in important fundraisers, volunteer for local outreaches or even travel on to the mission field….after the fact, it is all placed at an arms length, as it slowly drifts out of our minds.
So how do we expect to really understand this Messiah, who came to preach to the poor, if we continuously put the information we have out of our minds and the means we have right back into our pockets?
This is such a massive topic to tackle; you see, we know these things about ourselves, we know we can be hypocritical, complacent, and a host of other ugly things, but how do we fix it?
We would all, including myself, love for someone to provide us with an answer that fits perfectly into a box we can easily wrap our minds around, but this can’t be answered just like that. The best we can do is also probably the hardest—challenge ourselves, every single day—every selfish choice, every narrow-minded stance, challenge it all. Because, if we challenge our mindset we can color our world view with new, open minded strokes.