Day 55: Guest Speaker

The Church and the connection to social justice/injustice.  What do you think?

Guest speakers from today.

What forms your views?  Student answers: church, social media, family, friends/peers
Are these different influences trustworthy/right/skewed/biased?  Do you feel that these sources are helpful for helping form your opinion?

Has the church been influenced by the bible?
Historically speaking - church is supposed to follow the bible (the "authority"/the standard for what they are supposed to do/believe).  Changing the "world view".  Spiritual growth.

Has the church done a good job?  Negative views. 
- people were tortured for having different views
- people have different points of views/different interpretations
- sexual assault/molesting
- Church accepting slavery in Europe in history
- expecting people to conform to their views of the Christian faith
- growing hair long/listen to rock music/social drinking (telling people not to do this - expecting society to mimic the church in order to be closer to God)
- Church projecting themselves to be popular (just like in social media)

We judge all of the time.
Bible - the entire human race is sinful.
Based on gender/culture/past history - that is where the spread of the bible had possibly gone astray.

Pop culture: is the average person gotten off track of what is healthy?
Is creating awareness actually making change?  When we retweet/share something, does this actually help?
How do you "get back on track?"  What is your mechanism?  Social justice perspective in helping others.  How does pop culture get back on track?  Why do we have such a hard time getting back on track? 
How many of you have actually done that? - spoken to someone/done something to get back on track.
"Fast fashion" - 52 fashion cycles for the year.  Why are there 52 fashion cycles now instead of just two (fall/winter or spring/summer).  Social injustice connection - ex. fashion from developing countries who have exploited workers.

Church and social justice "shift" over the last 15 years. Positives:
Ex. working with global organizations (dalitfreedom.org),  helping free people from human trafficking, Surrey Memorial hospital, adoptions for locally/people abroad, guy in Cuba driving around and giving supplies to those in need, in Cambodia ijm (International Justice Mission) fighting to free child sex slaves to fight against people breaking laws.