Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Commitment. What do you think?

The other day my mom told me that her pastor recently mentioned only 40% of Americans claim they go to church. Which is a dwindling number, meaning there is an exodus of people either going to church, or claiming to go church. Maybe both.

She asked me what I thought about that and instead of reacting to the lack of religious conviction, my mind was automatically drawn to the fact that, lately, I've noticed there's a lack of commitment to a lot of things. In fact, just about everything.

Religion or no religion, I think you can see it in secular arenas too - Lions Clubs, Jaycees, and others face lacking participation; notably, marriages fall by dozens (some may view this as religious, I know). But, my comment in the moment of this question was, "Look at cell phone contracts. People can't even commit to those. They want everything like it is at Burger King. They want it their way, every day."

I really see it as an issue of selfishness. It's a lack of ability to commit because one is too selfish to give up doing whatever they want to, whenever they want to. Acting in any way that seems pleasing in the moment, justifying whatever they do as right because they say so. There may be plenty of people who, when they learn about a particular issue, could be compelled to commit. But when/if that means they need to change their lifestyles, pay attention to the things they do and say to be responsible or culpable for them, or to even to just go and rededicate themselves and learn more once each week, that's just too much.

Commitment is about being selfless, at least in many ways. A person has to say they are giving themselves to something, someone, a cause or whatever, and living within the boundaries that result is ok because they are all in.

When was the last time you saw someone do that?

1 comment:

  1. We are becoming (in many ways already are) a society of instant gratification. Going to church indicates a need to prepare your soul in advance for something you assume to be way in the future. We like to assume that we'll get to it later...when it's more pertinent to our immediate circumstances.

    Anyone who works with children sees how incredibly frustrated they become with anything that doesn't come to them immediately. For example: today I was asked by a 17 year old how much money (in 1942 Polish terms) someone would recieve from the Nazis for turning in a Jewish citizen. I turned to Google, and after two minutes of waiting, the kid told me, "Nevermind, I'll just do something else. You're taking too long." He changed his entire project because he didn't have 5 minutes to put into waiting for an answer. WTF?

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