One day a few weeks ago I was in my thinking mode and I had a thought about their phrase and what might be the impact of the customers because of it. What is it saying to the customer? I know that it is a way that Chi-Fil-A is trying to make the dinning experience more enjoyable and to make the customer want to come back. They were not the first company to bring the idea to the public. Years ago Burger King started their slogan “Have it your way.” I remember a time when businesses were not so forth coming with their service. If you bought a milkshake and then your child spilled it on the floor you actually had to go buy another one yourself. (GASP!!) Imagine that? You actually had to have a little personal responsibility. It wasn’t long after one company started the extreme service that others had to follow, or be left behind. What am I talking about? In one word: Entitlement.
America has become a land of Entitlement. Freedom has been translated into FREE! People used to ask for things, now they demand them. (Believe me I could tell you some stories!!) Listening to the radio a few days ago, I heard the statistic that 47% of people in the United States don’t pay any federal taxes AND many of them get money from the government. I could go back and give examples of the social welfare programs but I don’t want to bore you. I will point out that while many people complain that their Social security is not much to live on, most of them will receive multiple times more than they paid into it over the years. It’s not just the senior adults to. We have raised a generation of young people who do not appreciate what they do have. The year I graduated high school Georgia started a Lottery and a college scholarship program called HOPE. If you had a 3.0 or higher GPA the state would pay 100% of your college tuition. Earlier this year the state had to cut back on the moneys they were giving to keep the program alive. They had to cut the 100% to 93%. If your GPA was 3.8 or higher you still got 100% from the state. People protested in front of the capital, they were interviewed by TV and Radio and you would have thought that they had closed all the colleges up and their was no way they could go to college now.
Two months ago another chapter in the Entitlement book was being written, this chapter is called Occupy Wall Street. Groups of people gathered on Wall Street to protest cooperate greed, and a few hundred other things they didn’t agree with. Soon the movement spread throughout cities around America as they began to occupy parks in cities everywhere. The news coverage has not been dull when occupy Wall Street comes up. There have been a number of actions that I won’t get into except to name a few like, using the bathroom on an American flag and a police car, public nudity, public sex, violence and confrontations with police around the different cities, looting, rape, drug and alcohol abuse, and at this point one death in Oakland, CA. I’ve only just scratched the surface with the list above.
So who are these people? According to a survey of Zuccotti Park protesters by the Baruch College School of Public Affairs published on October 19, of 1,619 web respondents, 2/3 were younger than 35, half were employed full-time, 13% were unemployed and 13% earned over $75,000. 27.3% of the respondents called themselves Democrats, 2.4% called themselves Republicans, while the rest, 70%, called themselves independents.
On Oct. 10 and 11, the polling firm Penn, Schoen & Berland interviewed nearly 200 protesters. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, 98% would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and 31% would support violence to advance their agenda. Most are employed; 15% are unemployed. Most had supported Obama; now they are evenly divided. 65% say government has a responsibility to guarantee access to affordable health care, a college education, and a secure retirement. They support raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, and are divided on whether the bank bailouts were necessary.
Radio talk show host Neil Bortz among others has pointed out that the vast majority of these OWS protesters are young and have not had a taste of the real world. ”They have been told” ” Neil continues “that they are all winners, and no one is a loser all their life. There are no soccer game lossers, because we can’t afford to hurt their self-esteem. Then when they get out of school and into the real world they revolt because nothing they have been told in life is true.” He adds that they all have lap tops, smart phones, and the latest gadgets, but yet they claim they are poor.
There are a lot of lessons to be learned here. We could talk about the prospective from which the “me” generation and how that if you live in America you are among the top 7 percent richest in the world. They could sell their laptops and smart phones and help feed a family for a year in another country. We could talk about the messy morality that this is an example of. How the sinfulness and selfishness of mankind is running wild because people have abandoned the church and godly principles.
2 Timothy 3:1-4 says “ 1 But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. 2 People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, 3 without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, 4 treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God— 5 having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with them.” Sounds like it was written yesterday doesn’t it?
So how do you fight back against this Entitlement mentality? Start by changing the way you personally entitle people around you. It’s good to give someone something, but it’s even better to teach them to provide something for themselves. It all starts with one. Jesus told us that we will always have the poor with us on the earth, but if we start teaching people how to fish rather than giving them a fish the situation will turn around again. Those that have can help take care of the smaller amount of those who really need help. If you make a mistake, own up to it, be personally responsible for your own actions. Don’t count on someone else picking up the tab for your mistake. Vote, put people in office that will help control the growing problem of entitlement. There are ways that we can slowly began to pull back on the throttle of entitlement that will still allow those that are receiving it now to ween themselves off part of what they get.
If you have any more suggestions or ideas please feel free to leave a comment. As always, questions, comments, and discussions are welcome.
Posted by johnweldon 
