Cultural differences is a common discussion topic with anyone that feels the need to practice their English with me here, and the thing that comes up most is the upbringing of the current generations. Here in China the family is everything, so when the government limited families to only 1 child each due to the massive population it changed an awful lot. You know that one kid in your class growing up that you just KNEW was an only child because they would arbitrarily decide that everything you had was theirs, that they got to do whatever they wanted, and threw a fit when you didn’t give in to these whims? Imagine the reverse, where you know the one kid that isn’t an only child because they don’t know how to whine as loud or grab as fast as all the other kids. That’s what it can be like here. Many of the kids just grab what they want because they don’t spend the first few years of their life having to defer to an idea of shared resources, and then upon entering into the larger world that is society here, well, grabbing fast gets you fed cause there’s a billion people all needing what you’re after. My question, then, is what’s the Western world’s excuse?
Somewhere along the line, our society started acting like it’s entitled to…well, everything. Some people reading this are nodding their heads thinking about those people you hear about on the news that won’t give up their huge retirement packages to save the jobs of the people working for them. But I’m not talking about greed. I’m talking about when you feel put out because the guy in the car in front of you is driving slower than you want. When you think ‘This is crap, I should get this free’ because a restaurant mixed up your order. We escape from our families because we deserve to be happy, we sue because we deserve an inconvenience free life, and we fight because we deserve respect. It all sounds logical. But is it true? What are we really entitled to?
You know the answer I’m getting at. We all know in our heads what we really deserve, it’s laid out in black and white (and often red lettering for Jesus’ words) – the wages of sin is death. I deserve to fall into the pit and burn. We don’t because of God’s mercy and love, but in that there’s something else we are entitled to in accepting His mercy – servanthood. Being a Christian means we get to serve. That’s it. We’re promised trials, troubles, persecutions, and that we get to serve those that do these things to us. We know this, somewhere in our heads, but we don’t live it. We’ve let what people are referring to as a culture of entitlement shape our thinking and actions instead.
I’m finally getting around to reading Les Miserables, and I’m sorry I didn’t do this 10 years ago, I love it. In the beginning there’s a scene often talked about in sermons and the like when Jean Valjean, a newly released convict, gets caught in possession of a set of silver plates he stole from the Bishop, the only man in town that would house him for the night. The police officers bring him back to the door of the Bishop, and the Bishop immediately cries out ‘I’m so glad you returned, did you not know that we gave you the candlesticks as well?’ Jean Valjean can’t really believe what just happened – as a man facing a return trip to prison, he’s instead given grace and means to start a new life. The Bishop, by our standards, is entitled to get his stuff back and to have such a man as this thief taken off the streets, that we would all be safer. He sees things how they should be seen though – he is entitled to serve, entitled to give a man his tunic when someone takes his cloak, entitled to show love, grace, and mercy in the proportion that it has been given us.
I’m not sure how to get there. My sister had her laptop stolen when the house was broken into last week, a laptop set up with programs to help vision impaired people. Her school will replace it, sure, but the pictures and other files on there are gone, many of which represent important work for her, and I’m pissed that somebody just stole something so important from my sister. I’d have a few choice words to say if I met the guy that did it. I wouldn’t think to offer him the install disks of all the programs on it just incase it crashed and needed a reformatting. I want that to change. May this entitlement culture be stripped from my being and replaced by a culture of servanthood, the culture of the Kingdom.
