I've been thinking lately about balancing. Activities, sure, but also beliefs. After coming to Wheaton, I've been getting my mind opened way up. It is incredible how much you realize you've been assuming things until you get challenged. It is also extremely frightening to be forced to throw out one of these assumptions. I bet a lot of people know the panic that ensues when you're like, "Holy crap. If that was wrong, how the heck can I be sure that anything I know is right?"
The reason this is a balancing act is because once I throw out an idea, I tend to veer to the other extreme. It usually takes a while for me to get to the "happy medium". And even now, there may be "happy mediums" I've found that are only gonna get thrown out too.
The most recent example of this is a time that I was playing cards with some friends, including my extremely patriotic friend Sam Randles. I myself do not consider myself a patriotic person, but maybe I'll talk about that later. Anyway, someone was telling me that some mail service was hiring and that I should look into that. Sam threw up a fist for me to punch and said, "Government jobs dude. Work for America."
I instantly recoiled at this idea, thinking, "Sam's saying something great about America. I probably disagree." Since then, I've thought about it and I realized that in my non-patriotism, I had become straight Anti-American, which I never intended to do. Since then, I've learned to be a lot more grateful for my country, and proud of it in a sense.
Comments on balancing activities or beliefs is welcome, but asking a question about balance would be boring, so instead, here's this:
Do you see yourself as a Patriot, an Antipatriot (as it were), or somewhere in between? Why?
Interesting. I would probably have had the same internal reaction to Sam's comment. I would see myself as somewhere in between on the patriotic issue. I think patriotism is good in moderation but when we hoist the flag every chance we get, brag about how we are the best and go to other countries and flaunt our nationality it just becomes embarrassing. You've also got the die hard fans of the link between patriotism and religion... I'm not sure how I feel about that. Personally I'm more patriotic about the fact that other people died to give us freedoms we abuse and complain about. Other than that... I don't have much allegiance to patriotism.
ReplyDeleteHey Jessie! You should check out my facebook. These get imported as notes and a ton of people have said some good stuff. Anyway, this is what I said there. Let me know what you think, either here or there. :-)
ReplyDelete"Here's my simplified stance on things: Countries are made up of people. Christians love all people (or have that stance). This means I love my country, but not more than any other country. I don't see "American" as an important part of my identity.
I also don't pledge allegiance because:
1) I don't see a need to pledge loyalty or allegiance to one country any more than another.
2) America isn't "one nation under God", so it's just pledging allegiance to an ideal that has no actual representation in reality."