Christianity: Flying in the Face of Popular Culture, Part III

Good Things and Bad Things about American Culture, Part II

This is part two of Good Things and Bad Things about American Culture. I never got around to explaining several of the things I enumerated in my previous post.

Most importantly:
* Living on Credit
* American Bigotry
* The Pioneer Spirit

Living on Credit - what more can I say? We all know it's wrong, but we all do it anyway.

I recently completed the Dave Ramsey course as I think many of my friends and readers did also. (I'm not sure, because I did the course as a "tele-course" - listening to the CDs on my own time and working out financial details with my wife.)

Anyway, I understand the concept: by buying everything I want whenever I want it even if I don't have cash, I'm slowly getting myself into serious debt. But who can argue? That's the American Way, right?

Well, on the other hand: would you rather live your whole life buying all your toys on credit and then dieing a poor man (but having lived so well!) or would you rather live your whole life scrimping by, scraping together every penny in order to purchase something and still die a poor man?

It's obvious why the "Living on Credit" version of life is so popular. I sit at the lunch table at work and listen to all my co-workers talk about their toys. I think to myself, MAN, how can they afford all that? And then I think: oh, yeah, they are not married and don't have families, OR, that guy there, his wife makes just as much as him, and so they have a two-income family, and probably make together 3 times what I make, and have no children, and so it makes sense that they can go to the Galapagos Islands and to Macho Picho for summer vacation.

Sigh...

At any rate: you really don't know if those people you see out there are all really THAT RICH, or if they are just living the good life on borrowed time. If you go by what Dave Ramsey says, for most of them it is the later and not the former.

It isn't hard to guess why Christianity flies in the face of such a life style.

American Bigotry
One more thing I don't like about American culture: it is our high-minded better-than-everyone-else mentality. Even if you are a relatively humble person, if you go to another country and they figure out you are from USA, they are going to treat you as if you are a bigoted American.

It doesn't help that we cram our military (or the threat thereof) down everyone's throat if we don't like something they do.

The Pioneer Spirit

The Pioneer Spirit is something I truly love about our culture, but I think I'm going to have to address it in yet another post. This is getting long.

Cheers!
Basil