Saturday, January 18, 2014

The Danger of the Single Story

This last Sunday, we reviewed our previous week's discussion and then talked about the dangers of the single story. If you weren't there, I HIGHLY, HIGHLY encourage you to check out the video we watched from the TED Talks series, featuring Chimamanda Adiche.

A smattering of what we discussed with the video:

  • Literature as social justice- legitimizes individual experiences, which then empowers people
  • “poor people” are not ONLY poor
  • Problems with emphasizing differences, rather than similarities
  • Search out multiple stories- one solution can’t fix everything
  • Power influences which stories are told and how often
  • Learning multiple stories help us recognize our prejudices
  • Problem with stereotypes are not that they're untrue, but incomplete
  • Have to engage all the facets, all of the stories
  • Literature is just one life calling, but there are MANY paths to social justice; whatever you love to do, there's a way to make it reflect justice
  • Our view of the world is not the only one, nor is it the most important.
  • Social justice challenges those view points, and we have to be willing to accept that in order to be relevant
  • Pity does not move mountains- relationships do
Finally, we made a list of areas in need of justice (a few of which we'll talk about this upcoming Sunday), and we discussed our upcoming, ongoing service project.
 
5 Minutes of God Time: Love Does by Brandon Heath

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Service and Social Justice

As promised, I'm going to try to stay up-to-date on blog posts this year (and what better way to start than with the first youth group of 2014?).

We're digging into social justice this month, and we started off with a discussion of social justice vs. service. And here's what we came up with on our own (I apologize for the lack of neat columns):

Service                                                                  Social Justice
helping "others"                                 helping others (and sometimes self)
can be once/short-term                                     ongoing, often takes a long time
charity-based                                                                often political-based
                                                               often has opposition ("change is bad" or just different ideas)
"give a man a fish"                                    working alongside those who are affected
 
 
We then watched a video that helped us to further explore the differences and similarities, as well as the Christian call to action.
 
We also went over the modern "parable" of the babies in the river, which some of us first encountered during our mission trip this summer. For those who haven't read it, you can either pick up a hard copy on the bulletin board, or you can read it here.
 
Our 5 Minutes of God Time song was "Oceans" by Hillsong United
 
We also added a fun activity to our schedule for January and we talked about some ongoing service project options (coming soon in email form).
 
I hope to see you all on Sunday to continue our discussions!