I think it is interesting that when you turn on the news, all you hear about is conflict! It's what turns us on, gets us interested, and makes us take that second look. Our favorite kind of conflict though seems to be, the conflict in other peoples lives. huh...
Yesterday on the news, a little blurb came up about Demi Lovato, saying she "was headed to rehab..."...that was all it took, and immediately I started thinking "why?" and the TV had my full attention.
What is it that makes us so interested in other people's problems? What makes YOU so interested in other people's problems?
For me, conflict in lives of people my age I find more interesting then conflict in adults lives. I want to see how the young person will react to the publicity, or how they will respond in general, then I tend to go on and think..."what would I have done?" I can keep myself occupied for hours in this manner....
So now I ask you...
What specific kinds of conflicts catch YOUR attention? and why?
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Want a tax cut? Consider home schooling!
Home schooling is becoming more and more popular though..." In the United States similar trends were noted with numbers jumping from 50,000 homeschooled students in 1985 to an estimated 850,000 in 1999, according to the US Department of Education."
(http://www.suite101.com/content/trends-and-growth-in-homeschooling-a48813)
...and here
"Home schooling is much cheaper than public school education. If government is looking for ways to reduce costs, active encouragement of home schooling as a serious option ought to be promoted and encouraged. If most children were home-schooled, then many schools could become public parks or libraries, and all the fossil fuels used to drive children to school, to heat, light, and air condition schools, and other activities that are anathema to environmentalists could be avoided. Public schools could always be the option for parents who, for whatever reason, cannot home-school their children or send their children to private schools, but the public policy of promoting private instruction of students could solve many problems that government currently and clumsily tries to solve through the expenditure of vast government resources and the hyper-regulation of education in many states." (http://www.thenewamerican.com/index.php/culture/education/4722-homeschooling-in-america-grows)
...may be an answer to help some budgeting problems our country is now experiencing! Perhaps taxing the rich more is not the answer, or signing away stimulus bills.
The average funding per-student in Missouri is $7,000 in the public school system, while my mom spends $800-$1,000 a year on school curriculum for eight children, but never any more then $2,000 for eight children with sports, theater, dance, or debate included. That's $100-$250 per student a year! However, there are more expensive options for home schooling, CD's that can be bought with learning materials, or buying certain curriculum can get up to $4,000 a year, but not many homeschooling families spend that much. You can almost even home school for free from public libraries, and from libraries established by home school groups that are rooms of amassed curriculum. In the school district that I live in alone gets $38.3 million a year at the rate of $7,625 a student. Where if these students were to be educated in my family, $1,509,600 would be spent a year on them. That leaves a difference of $36.8 million in my school district alone that could be use for something else.
We all either are paying taxes already, or will be soon. All this money is being dumped into school systems that are failing more and more as we speak...we see this as we look at the violence in our schools, the drugs, the poor grades...is this something you want to pay taxes for? or at least, this much money towards?
"What a Bunch of JERKS"
If you consider yourself a "Christian", I am sure that at one time or another, you have experienced some sort of situation in which someone stereotyped you.
One of my best friends now did just that to me two years ago when I first met him "oh, another one of those judgmental Bible believing Christians, well let me poke holes in all her theories, and prove to her how dumb it is to believe what she does." So over the next year and a half my Atheist friend would take every opportunity to challenge what I believed, and introduced me to friends of his who shared his opinions, and we would spend hours on debates. But I noticed through all of this, all of them thought of Christians as people who were very judgmental, arrogant, uneducated in their religion, prideful, hypocritical, selfish people. Having all this thrown on me came as a shock.
"Why are Christian denominations the biggest targets?" (http://religiousconflicts.blogspot.com/)
I was not ignorant of the fact that these types of "Christians" existed, but this idea had never met me on a personal level. Now it had. This became a great source of frustration for me as I began to critique the lives of the Christian people around me; some I found were this way, others were not...then I turned the critiquing on myself. I also became more aware of instances on the news concerning "Christians"...
"http://www.videonewslive.com/view/490022/prominent_pastor_accused_of_molestation"
and
"http://articles.cnn.com/2010-07-29/us/florida.burn.quran.day_1_american-muslims-religion-cair-spokesman-ibrahim-hooper?_s=PM:US"
...both instances in which most of us are now familiar. These sorts of things bring a lot of criticism on Christians, something that effects people nation wide, even me.
But the other day while driving to school, on the radio I heard of a Church advertising it's self as "What a Bunch of JERKS!" Finally someone who has got it right! This is exactly how I had begun to feel over the past two years, and now someone was admitting it. Here is what the Church had to say...
One of my best friends now did just that to me two years ago when I first met him "oh, another one of those judgmental Bible believing Christians, well let me poke holes in all her theories, and prove to her how dumb it is to believe what she does." So over the next year and a half my Atheist friend would take every opportunity to challenge what I believed, and introduced me to friends of his who shared his opinions, and we would spend hours on debates. But I noticed through all of this, all of them thought of Christians as people who were very judgmental, arrogant, uneducated in their religion, prideful, hypocritical, selfish people. Having all this thrown on me came as a shock.
"Why are Christian denominations the biggest targets?" (http://religiousconflicts.blogspot.com/)
I was not ignorant of the fact that these types of "Christians" existed, but this idea had never met me on a personal level. Now it had. This became a great source of frustration for me as I began to critique the lives of the Christian people around me; some I found were this way, others were not...then I turned the critiquing on myself. I also became more aware of instances on the news concerning "Christians"...
"http://www.videonewslive.com/view/490022/prominent_pastor_accused_of_molestation"
and
"http://articles.cnn.com/2010-07-29/us/florida.burn.quran.day_1_american-muslims-religion-cair-spokesman-ibrahim-hooper?_s=PM:US"
...both instances in which most of us are now familiar. These sorts of things bring a lot of criticism on Christians, something that effects people nation wide, even me.
But the other day while driving to school, on the radio I heard of a Church advertising it's self as "What a Bunch of JERKS!" Finally someone who has got it right! This is exactly how I had begun to feel over the past two years, and now someone was admitting it. Here is what the Church had to say...
What a bunch of JERKS!
The church has failed. That’s right; we’ve messed up, big time. The church was SUPPOSED to be a reflection of the God it claimed to serve. The church was SUPPOSED to be the hands and feet of Jesus Christ. But, for the most part, the church has failed.
Our failure has left a bad taste in people’s mouths. Our mistakes have led to a lack of credibility. Our messes have caused people to seek answers for this life elsewhere. And really, who could blame people for giving up on the church? Ghandi had a very good point when he said “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
What a bunch of jerks. Prideful, hypocritical, selfish, judgmental jerks.
At Christ Covenant Church, do you know what our response is? Guilty as charged. We are fed up with it just as much as you are. We’ve failed. We’ve failed you, we’ve failed each other, and the worst part is that we’ve failed to act like Jesus. And it’s time to own up to our failure because only then can we turn it around. So no more sugar coating it, no more pretending.
That’s what this is all about. We’ve decided that we want to turn it around. We may not be able to change the past, but we can sure change the future. And we want to. We want to be a reflection of the God that we serve. We want to be the hands and feet of Jesus.
...To which a media source replied "Humility. What a concept! "
Pier Pressure
When you think of peer pressure, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? For me, I see in my mind all my friends, the people I hang out with on the weekends, the ones I see every day at school. When you think of pier pressure, do you generally think of it as a positive or a negative thing? For me, I usually think of it as a negative thing. I do not think I have a lot of pier pressure in my life because of this, but when I thought about it more, I realized my life is full of it, full of positive pier pressure.
My family creates the greatest amount of pier pressure in my life. Just one example would be my brother...
My older brother is crazy. He walked into his ACT test and got a thirty-four hands down the first time. All I can remember is thinking “whoa,” but when I talk to him about he says “I wish I had gone back and taken it again, I should have been able to get that perfect score.” My brother is one of a very few people I know who seems to be good at everything without even trying. But when I sit down and talk with him, I realize he is never happy with his performances, he sees how he can improve, and is always working towards perfection. But he challenges me to keep working hard, and to always find something to improve on. When I had received my ACT score back the first time, he called me up to see how I did. It was not a happy number. Instead of saying “Yeah, that sucks” he said “Well go take it again!”, and this continued as I retook, the test three more times before getting the score I needed. He has taught me to always have higher expectations for myself, and never fails to call me up every now and then to make sure I am still working hard.
I listen to kids on campus talk about all the things they are up to, the party last weekend, the guy they met the other day and things got out of hang with...and I realized how blessed I am to have such a strong family base that would kick my butt if I did anything dumb.
Perhaps the problem is not that there is too much negative pier pressure out there, but that we do not use the positive pier pressure to balance it out. It is not too often that I hear from friends what good relationships they have with the people in their family, especially with parents. The usual narration is: “yeah, my mom and I don't get along very well...”, “I really don't spend much time at home, it's boring.” I find this sad; the home is where one should be a place of support, learning, encouragement, and urging forward. Many times this is what keeps me going, something I know I can always fall back to.
So enough about all that negative pier pressure, where do you get your positive pier pressure?
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
"Love does not cause pain"
I thought this was interesting...I put this as my facebook status and it got quite the discussion going, so I thought I would share.
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