Being a Christian in the 21st Century

A friend of mine shared this article with me and it was really good.

http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/when-did-christians-get-so-mean

More and more, I see some folks with a very negative view of Christians, and as a Christian myself, I can't say I blame them.  This of course, doesn't apply to all Christians but it's hard not to scroll through my Facebook wall and see some angry post about homosexuals and liberals are ruining the world.  If people put as much time into bettering themselves as they did scanning the Internet for articles and memes to make their point, well, I wouldn't be here writing this blog.

A couple weeks ago I was attending my church's Bible Study group.  This is something I usually enjoy at least when we're actually sitting down studying and interpreting the Bible, but half the group wasn't there whether they were on vacation or whatever leaving me with a bunch of over 50 folks who ended up spending the entire hour complaining about how homosexuals and liberals were "ruining" everything and how everything was better in the "good old days."  You know the 50s and 60s where we were under constant threat of nuclear annihilation and were told you would survive a nuclear blast by hiding under your desk.  Part of me wanted to leave halfway through when I was sure we were never going to get to our studying because if I want to listen to a bunch of old people rant, I can watch Fox News anytime I want.

You constantly hear how many people are drifting away from church or religion in general but no one seems to know why or they blame TV or something inconsequential, yet if I was an outsider looking in, I'd get the impression that being a Christian now seems to mean being a xenophobic, narrow minded zealot who doesn't want to hear an opinion that differs from their own.  This of course doesn't apply to all Christians, but sadly the most vocal ones like the Westboro Baptist Church folks, are the ones getting all the attention.  Apparently if you're gay, like science or vote democrat, you're not welcome.

That's something that really annoys me is when religion and politics start mixing.  Folks, politicians say what they think people want to hear in order to get votes.  If someone wants the gay vote, they'll say how they support gay marriage.  If they want the Latino vote, they'll talk about immigration reform.  If they want the middle class Christian vote, they start quoting Bible verses or talk about prayer in our schools.  They are saying what we want to hear even if it has no bearing on the issues at hand.  As of lately, they also use scare tactics to get your attention and we buy into it because we're paranoid and gullible.  Let's strip this thing down to it's bare bones definition.  "Liberal Means Large" and "Conservative Means Small."  Do you want a large or small government?  All that other stuff is just fodder tossed in to get more voters on either side and, for me that's gotten out of hand to the point where there is no longer a happy medium.  It's one extreme or the other.  George Washington warned us of what a two party system would do but we didn't listen and look where it's got us.

The same applies to religion these days it seems.  If you're a Christian who is accepting of the gay lifestyle or thinks that maybe evolution is true but that God created those first single celled organisms, then you're an awful person who's going to hell.  I truly think when you die and you're standing in line to go to heaven that St. Peter isn't going to care whether you voted for Obama or believed in evolution, rather he's going to look at how you were as a person and whether or not you were kind and generous to others and followed the Ten Commandments as best you could.  You  know not killing, stealing, bearing false witness, etc.

This is not being a "cafeteria Christian" and picking and choosing what you want to believe. This is adjusting to an ever changing world.   The Bible was written over 2000 years ago and those who wrote it had no idea how things would change in the future.  If we don't accept change and adapt to the modern world, more and more people will distance themselves from church and religion in general.  People want to be lead, not pushed. Instead of wasting your time behind a screen typing angry things in comment sections or posting random memes on Facebook, go out and do good deeds for others.  I'm sure if Jesus existed in this modern technological age, he'd have better things to do than blog about what's wrong with the world. (yes I know the irony of that last statement)

Why I shop at Kroger instead of Walmart.

So since I moved to a town with a Kroger nearby, I tend to get my groceries there as opposed to Walmart.  Yes I know I'm paying a little more and I don't have the convenience of going to a store with more than just groceries but I'm going to list some reasons I do this.  Now bear in mind, I do still go to Walmart for some things namely because it's a small town and it's close and sometimes it's the only place open at a certain hour but still I've tried to avoid shopping there when it comes to some things for various reasons.

1) Coupons: I found the coolest app for my phone.  Many grocery stores now have digital coupon apps for smart phones.  Back in the day if you wanted to use coupons, you had the tedious task of cutting them out of the paper, remembering to carry them with you, risk the chance of losing them or getting to the store only to not read the fine print of what item they applied to.  Now if, said grocery store has some sort of customer rewards card, you can simply go into the app, select the coupon you want to use and it loads it to your customer card and automatically shows up when you go to checkout meaning you don't have to wait around for the cashier to enter or scan it in, if they even can. On top of that, if a couple expires, it's simply deleted from the app, so no thinking you had a coupon to use only to have it be expired.

2) Gas Points: Honestly I think the only thing keeping other grocery stores from totally going out of business is their gas point programs. Here's how that works: those customer reward cards will rack up points from your purchases that go towards gas discounts.  Most seem to have a system that every hundred points you get, gets you 10 cents off per gallon.  I even found even if I didn't have enough points to redeem, just by having the customer rewards card, I got 3 cents off a gallon.

3) They actually have enough registers open.  We all complain about this.  Walmart has 25 registers and only four ever seem to be open and the ones that are open always have a ten mile line.  I like going to Kroger because I almost never have to wait in line for a cashier.  When I worked at Lowes years ago, when lines got long they would call for floor employees who weren't busy to open up registers to move the line along. This is something Walmart seems incapable of or perhaps they don't care.

4) I don't have to see stuff like this: www.peopleofwalmart.com

5) Personal reasons. For a lot of people I know, many try to avoid Walmart namely because of the reasons everyone hates them.  They drive out other businesses. They treat their employees like crap and despite making billions each year, can't be bothered to pay employees decent living wages or given them decent benefits meanwhile they blow millions on PR stuff to try to show they aren't horrible instead of just, you know, treating employees better or giving better customer service.  Now a lot of big box retailers are like this, but some are better at damage control than others.

So yeah, I don't like shopping at Walmart unless I have to and I have found alternatives and many times, I end up saving money by shopping smart and keeping an eye out for bargains.