So... tonight I was talking... or at least listening to a conversation about the MTV show "My Super Sweet Sixteen" it is not such a super show, unless you are in the mood to be completely disgusted by the frivolity of some people who seem to have everything. The show, if you are lucky enough to have never seen it, is about kids turning 16 and the parties that their abundantly rich parents throw for them. One of the people in the conversation told of an episode where the parents tell their daughter that they bought her a used BMW for her birthday... and the girl is angry, sad... pissed off. Well, they were only joking... they actually bought her a new BMW... which changes her mood. Sure she is happy, but what is really disgusting to me is that she thinks that she deserves it. Now I don't know about you... but kids in my neighborhood growing up were lucky to get a new BMX for their birthday... my first car was a 1985 Buick LeSabre... green... her name was Betsy. I am pretty sure that my grandparents bought Betsy brand new in 1985 and it was passed down from one brother to the next then to me in the family.
Anyway... I am not talking about cars. What I am talking about is our "natural" tendency to believe that we deserve things... that we are entitled to certain things in life. When High School was ending for me it really wasn't a question as to IF I was going to college it was WHERE. Why? There are so many people in this country... this city... my high school that were never going to go to college... either because they somehow fell through the cracks of our education system or because they just couldn't afford it. There are so many people who see finishing high school as the greatest accomplishment of their life.
I have now seen the movie Freedom Writers three times... and I would go again with anyone who wants to go. It is definitely not the best movie ever made, it may not even be one of the best of the year, but something about it has touched me. It is the story of a group of High Schoolers in Long Beach, CA following the Rodney King riots. It begins Freshman Year 1994 (which incidently is the same year I was a freshman). I think what strikes me the most about this movie is discovering who I identify with in this movie. I like to identify with the hero, the lover or the comedian who everyone likes... in this movie I found myself identifying with the characters who by the end of the movie you grow to be disgusted with.
The heros in this movie are the students. The teacher plays an important role, she listens, learns and helps these youth grow into strong confident adults. There is a Vice Principal and another teacher who play the roles of traditional antagonists. They create roadblocks and walls for the class to climb over. Finally there is the husband who has a line where he says "I just want to go about living my life without feeling bad about it." This is who I so often identify with. By the end of the movie I realized that I could use a little shake up in my life. Something to take my worldview and mess it all up so that I can see clearly the simplicity. The simple fact that we are all humans and I am no more entitled to anything than anyone else. A girl in the movie, Eva, talks about respect in so far as "white people" think they deserve respect just because they are white. And they can do anything they want just because they're white. We may look at this and say, "wow... she really doesn't get that being white doesn't get you everything" because we know from experience that we have our hurdles to jump over... but that is not the point. When was the last time that you looked at yourself and really thought about the privileges that you take advantage of due to the color of your skin. Really... look... when you go to church, do most of the people look like you? Can you walk into a fancy hotel without people staring? When you put a bandaid on your skin does it match the color for the most part? Do you have to shop in a different aisle at Target for your shampoo and hair products?
Some of these examples may not seem too big of a deal, but there are so many ways that we take advantage of a priviledge that we did not earn, but is afforded us due to the color of our skin. We live in a world that says that white kids are entitled to a better education. Not because kids at the same school of a different color don't get the same opportunities but because in areas with higher percentages of other races, the schools do not provide the same education. Please, if you are offended, don't turn off and stop reading... but look into your offense and see if there is any truth. One of the characters in the movie was a young black teenager who was in the "distinguished honors" class. She transfers to the other class because she is sick of being treated like the novelty... "the black girl with a brain." When we point out the people like Barak Obama, Colin Powell, Oprah, and other prominent and intelligent black leaders, and we point them out as the wonder kids who made it against all odds... sure it makes us feel good. We think, if they can make it, we must be doing something right. But what does that do? Are we just pointing out the successful men and women of color to show that they are the "black kids with a brain?"
The point is that we look at the affluent, rich kids from My Super Sweet Sixteen and think how disgusting their frivolousness is and how we have a much harder life with mortgages and paying for hockey equipment and balancing school, work and friends, and budgeting enough to pay for that Disney vacation and dealing with gas prices that keep getting hiked up so it costs $50 to fill the tank of our SUVs. We put money away into savings so that in a few years we can take that trip to Europe or put a down payment on a new house. We have it hard. Then think about the person who juggles 3 jobs to pay for the 2 bedroom apartment and fill 6 mouths. The person whose son deals drugs to bring home some more money for the family. The person who buys a gun to protect their family from gang violence or joins a gang to have protection from others. The person who has never left Wisconsin, never seen DisneyWorld, doesn't even dream about visiting Europe because it will never happen.
Yes... we are a priviledged culture. A poignant part of this movie was when a kid drew a picture of one of the black students with big fat lips. The teacher gives them a lecture about the holocaust (which most of the students had never heard of before) and tells them of the nazi tactic of creating ads against jews with big noses. They say that they think they will get respect when they die protecting their own... Yet, she says, when they die they will rot in the ground and everyone will go on living. When they die, she says, no one will remember them because all they left behind was hate. This is really not any different from us. When we die, life will go on... what will you be remembered for... will it be your fancy clothes, your nice car... your apathetic attitude towards authority and towards life?? We are all dust and to dust we shall return... What can we hope to be remembered for?
Pastor Rod said in his sermon this morning that the very best compliment we can hope to receive is that we have an excellent spirit, that we have integrity. The best we can hope to be remembered by is that we lived our life in love and others around us saw God's love thru us. And believe me... not a single one of us is entitled to God's love. We are broken, dirty, messy and sinful... We screw up everyday and we blatantly ignore our call to be people of God... no none of us are entitled to this gift of God's grace... We don't deserve it. But God loves His creation so much that He would die to make us new. If you want to be remembered for something it would be to humbly accept this invitation to be in relationship with God and to wholly give yourself to His service so that people will remember that you showed them Christ through your words... through your actions... through your love.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment