Sunday, April 6, 2008

What Cause will You Commit to?


In the Holocaust Lit class, Sonja DuBois challenged them to pick one cause to devote their time, energy, and resources to. As you age, there will be lots of requests and demands of you for social causes and charities. One lesson of the Holocaust is that "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." (Edmund Burke) We are responsible, throughout our lives, as citizens of a democracy, of a society, for doing our best to correct injustices around us. Too often we do one of two things: we either ignore these problems or we try to give a little to everything to ease our guilty consciences. As Sonja so eloquently pointed out, imagine if each person chose ONE cause and devoted him or herself to it for life?

Obviously my passion is respect for your fellow man. I have devoted myself as an educator to a study of the Holocaust in the hope of educating those around me about making the world a safer place. I feel that every human being deserves respect. As far as my "cause", beyond being a Holocaust educator, I am committed to a ministry for abused and neglected children called Royal Family Ministries. My church does a camp every summer for nearly forty children in the foster care systems of Bradley, Hamilton, and McMinn counties. I have served as a counselor at that camp almost every year since its inception in 1999. This is our tenth year for Royal Family Kids Camp, and we have expanded that ministry to include a middle school retreat about five years ago. I serve on the Royal Family board at my church, Kraig and I are both counselors, and we have chosen to make this ministry the source of our financial support. You know that I try not to ask you to do anything I would not/am not doing, so I wanted to answer the question that follows before I asked you to.

My question to you is, what is your cause going to be? What are you passionate about? What do you see as something that merits your time, energy, and resources? Or are YOU going to stand by and do nothing?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

If I had to chose one cause to support Compassion International. This is an organization that lets you sponsor a child in a third world country in need and you exchange letters and photos, you provide opportunities for their education and health,and the child that you are sponsering will learn about Jesus through a church-based organization. It feel very privelged to have the things that I do and most of the time I take them for granted but there are other children all over the world who do not and will not have the things that I had and have growing up and if I can reach out and make a diffrence in someone's life then I will feel like I am at least accomplishing something and helping someone in need out. I learned about this organization through my family and I think that it is absolutley a beautiful thing to help people in need. These children and I would like to be someone who helps at least one child.

Anonymous said...

If I had to chose to support one cause I would chose to protect the environment. I would like to help make the world a better place for all the organisims living on it. I am very passionate about not littering, or polluting. I want this world to be pleasant for the people of the future.

Anonymous said...

The cause I would join would be to make sure communism and fascism will never take over the world. That is what I would join.
Harry

Anonymous said...

I plan on devoting myself to guiding young people to become honorable and respectful human beings and future leaders. When I grow up, I would love to be able to maybe teach a journalism class and coach a sport. In this environment, I would be able to effect the lives of countless numbers of young people. If our society continues in the direction it is headed today, the world will be a place no longer fit to be lived in before long. I hope to be able to play a small part in turning that trend around. Through teaching and mentoring, I hope to be able to influence many young people to become leaders in a respectful and respectable society.