The Loss of Community

So this is my first attempt at daily blogging... here we go.

I was thinking today about how as a society we are becoming increasingly separate from one another. We personalize just about everything, from ring tones for different individuals, to the wallpaper on personal computers, to building cars from the interior to the exterior- different colors, different materials, different add-on's (air, satellite radio, power locks, windows, etc) Yet it's not just the personalizing on an individual level but the broader influence of building things for particular people groups, from race to gender to cultural status.

For instance I stopped at this "newer" McDonald's by my work the other day and went inside to place my order, the restaurant had the appearance of a high class coffee house. Now I love my coffee houses but something was different about the overall look of this fast food joint. There were high walls separating every 2 or 3 seats- so why is this a big deal?

Well it isn't- more of a reflection that anything else. That even in the simplest of places such as a McDonald's we have this drive towards staying separate from one another. This motion towards being secluded from one another isn't the only thing that is pulling us apart but also account for the superficial language that most of us have to take part in from day to day. We fill our lives with conversation that isn't always our own agenda but somebody elses. For those in the retail/sales/service world you can possibly understand what I'm saying by the very fact that most of your day (like my own) is built around telling people what they want to hear (either your employer or the customer)

"Yes. that's a great idea" (when really it's not)
"You should take part in this payment plan or you HAVE to have these batteries with your purchase" (when really you and I both know that the customer doesn't NEED them)

Or how about this little one...

Hi how are you today?
- doing okay, yourself?
(Inside you are just having the worst day ever but... what do you say?)
I'm okay.

So we have personalization, separation, superficial relationships/conversations and the last two?

The push and pull of our culture to be all about "Me" (buyouts)
and
The drive towards tomorrow ("buy-ins")

In keeping this short I'll just describe these two things briefly
- The acceleration of this culture as a "me" culture calls out to young boys and girls to own their own future, to think about themselves first before others and to ultimately imagine the world as a "dog eat dog world."

Yet this isn't just about little kids, its the message that our politicians and "leaders" subscribe to today as they believe that printing off 700 million dollars can encourage our economy to grow. Put ourselves further in debt in order to create margin? If we're in the negatives currently then how do we believe that adding to that negative will produce a positive? Which feeds into my next claim...

The drive towards tomorrow has us captivated by saving today while continuing to utilize the same spending, same systems, same ethics, same laws that put us in this situation to begin with.
We'll do the quick fix of throwing more money into our country to have things nice and easy today while we bury our children tomorrow and so on and so forth.

Personalization, Separation, Superficial Relationships/Conversations, "Me" Culture and The Drive towards Tomorrow all add up to the breakdown of community and society in general.

Now what are we to do as the Body of Christ?