Fire, Brimstone, and Greener Pastures for Religious Involvement :: Free Essays Online

Fire, Brimstone, and Greener Pastures for Religious Involvement Lacking the ready opportunity to visit a unique congregation while stuck, carless, on campus over break, I instead focus on a "field trip" that my churchs' Sunday School class took one Sunday morning last summer. Picture if you will a group of white Presbyterian teenagers hopping into a shiny church van and cruising 15 minutes south, into the poorer, blacker reaches of inner-city Memphis (where neighborhood segregation is still very much the rule). Our destination was relatively near our own church, and yet worlds apart, too. Ours was the area of stately old homes with well-kept lawns along oak- and elm-lined streets, homes filled with the genteel, white urbanites of the city. A mere handful of blocks to the south, however, lay a land of equally old but far more poorly maintained homes, streets long since denuded of any trees they may once have sported. We had left our comfortable zone of neighborhood watches and block clubs, choosing instead to spend our worship hours in a part of t he city instead known for its special police precinct and its multitudinous economic redevelopment zones. Thus did we find ourselves at the Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church. Venturing inside, we all noticed two things very quickly: we were at once wearing entirely too much clothing to be comfortable in the sweltering heat, and entirely too little to fit in with the rest of the congregants assembled. And yet we were welcomed with open arms. We had arrived, the Reverend Rogers L. Pruitt emphasized as we filed into the sanctuary, on a very special day. As he distributed bulletins and hearty handshakes to the rest of the group, I noticed that the front of mine read "Fragment Day." As I looked around the modest sanctuary, I wondered what the service had in store for us. The sanctuary was bare, and the pews hard. I mentally tallied a comparison between my own church's sanctuary and this. The two, I found, were similarly austere, but with theirs tending toward items of religious kitsch and our own tending instead towards polished brass. Both lacked stained glass in the windows. I suspected, however, that where our sanctuary was plain in token tribute to the long-dead strict streak of our Calvinist tradition, theirs was bare because it could not economically be otherwise. And the lack of air conditioning  ­ ! Memphis' summer heat is unbearable and pervasive, and a roof overhead does nothing against the big blanket of humid air.

Academin Excellence Guarantees a Successful Life

VIVIEN KHOR WEI WEN H3P5 Academic excellence guaranteees a successful life. Do you agree? Human beings are creatures than can be influenced easily,they tend to follow what others are practising. The current world has defined that people should be judged based on their academic excellence, and it has caused an obligation among people to strive towards academic excellence due to the higher demands of top achievers in the career world. However, most of us have neglected the fact that academic excellence is not the sole factor to determine one’s future.What is the use of academic excellence when the person does not even possess the knowledge of basic living and surviving skills? Henceforth, I staunchly disagree with the statement that academic excellence guarantees a successful life because basic living skills , disicpline and also the maturity of a person determines his or her survival in the rat-race world. To elucidate explicitly,we first have to know what lies in the phrase â €˜basic living skills’.Basic living skills are fundamental skills that humans need and have to pick up in order to support themselves in terms of their well-being. They are one of the prime factors that determines one’s success. To be precise, basic living skills comprise skills like cooking,doing housechores,repairing some simple electrical appliances,and much more. Henceforth ,basic living skills are essential in human’s lives because they act as the assistants for homosapiens to cope with life.Academic excellence doesn’t guarantee that you are actually a versatile and systematic person. It only tells the world that this particular person is smart and this person,is eligible to be in the intelligent cliques. Coming to realisation,the government has actually made some changes in its education system by adding in Basic Living Skills as one of the compulsory subjects in schools in order to expose the students towards mastering basic living skills. This has once again proven that basic living skills play an important role in everybody’s life.We do not deny that academic excellence is important,but it is not the sole factor to guarantee one’s success in the future. A person who maters basic living skills are more systematic and creative when it comes to problem solving circumstances as they learn from their past experiences , but not from the books. In contrast,when a person pays his attention only on academic excellence,he might be able to answer complex mathematics questions and aces in his examinations, however there is a big possibility that he doesn’t even know how to change a bulb.Thus, to climb up the staircase towards success, the first step is to master basic living skills. Moving on,people nowadays are indoctrinated with the mentality of to be outstanding,academic excellence comes first. Well,yes. All of us think the same way,academic excellence actually promises a higher salary,a better working enviro nment, and of course a pretigious job too. However,most of us do not realise that the indoctrination of this mindset has actually caused a rupture in mentality of the people,especially teenagers ,who are the future backbones of the country.Rather than focusing on their own character building,students nowadays tend to insert maximum attention towards their studies ,which consequently has affected their discipline. By just flipping throught hr newspaper, we can see a cornucopia of reports and articles which are centered towards this issue. There are a lot of excellent students out there who get expelled from school due to their serious disciplinary problems. And thus, to gain success, we have to first discipline ourselves whilst acing in the examinations as success comes from discipline.Ironically, if disciplined people don’t exist, there might be much more crime in the white-collared career world, which will lead to the downfall of the country. Looking at this issue from a dif ferent perspective, the maturity of a person is also one of the other key role that determines one’s success, apparently, it is more important than academic excellence. Maturity refers to the way of how people deal with things and accept life the way it is. For instance, a matured people would perceive difficulties and putting it into practice, because he or she knows that it is the best way of solving the problem.However ,an immature people would just practically give up and blame everyone for the unfortunate encounters. Try flipping through the pages of your newspaper, there is always news reporting about the suicide of an academically excellent student due to the failure of coping with study stress and peer pressure. This has clearly shown that scholars nowadays are too narrow minded and pessismistic when problems arise as they lack of exposure in life due to the long hours of studying to obtain academic excellence for the sake of leading a successful life in the future.Ho wever, they have totally neglected the fact thatthey themselves,need to go out and see things and gain knowledge which would help them to deal with problems in life in the future. There is a saying goes, â€Å" If you fail to plan, you plan to fail â€Å". To guarantee a successful life, good plannings are essential in order to make things flow systematically. To plan well, you first need to have a matured mind. As an analogy, academic excellence is the lock towards a successful life, but the key that unlocks it is the maturity and mentality of a working adult.Henceforth , maturity definitely plays a more important role in determining a successful life compared to academic excellence. As a versatile person, we need to be aware that academic excellence is not everything in life. Failing in exams does not mean that you are going to fail in life. There are more things outside to be explored compared to the thick reference books, so why not give yourself a chance to explore the world and build up your own character and morality in order to become a better person.Academic excellence does play an important role in life, but there are a few more elements that we need to focus on in order to gain a successful life. In other words, a successful life is determined from many aspects as each and every elements of life contributes to the success of a person. Academic excellence can only guarantee a brighter future, but not necessarily a successful life, as it can only be achieved when a person is versatile, discipline and owning a matured mind. Henceforth , humans need to open up their minds and try to look at life in a different scope,if they are strong-willed enough to achieve a successful life.

Identity Theft Essay - 1749 Words

You come home late one night after a rough day at work. You’re hungry, tired, achy and all you want to do is lie down. You pick up the mail and notice a letter from a credit card company you don’t have a contract with. Slowly, you open the envelope, not knowing what to expect. Suddenly, pure terror fills you as you stare at a bill for over five thousand dollars. You reassure yourself and say this obviously must be some mistake. You never opened this credit card account, but yet it’s in your name and it is your address. You may not believe it, but your identity has been stolen and now someone is out there posing as you, running willy nilly around town with your life in hand. The truth is, there is almost nothing you can do once your†¦show more content†¦It continues in early American history with fraud in voter registration to stuff ballot boxes. In the 1930’s with the end of prohibition America would see the most common form of identity theft for over half a century, the â€Å"fake ID†. Reasons for Identity Theft changed over time and became more sophisticated as new forms of technology were introduced to the public. Now not only did people have the motive, but also the resources to take someone’s identity and money. However, what exactly is considered modern identity theft? Identity Theft is when a criminal uses someone else’s identification documents such as social security number, drivers license, tax documents, birth certificate, bank statements and many other forms of identification in order to impersonate them. Once someone has this information there are a number of ways in which they could use it and a number of ways in which they can obtain it. Phishing Phishing is the most common type of identity theft in the world. Thieves will send fake emails out to people saying there is a problem with their paypal or Amazon accounts. It claims that if they do not enter their account information in a timely manner, then their accounts will become frozen. It is not just emails regarding account information, but fake malicious websites are also created. These websites and emails scare people into giving their personal information, without even realizing what they have done before it isShow MoreRelatedIdentity Theft1365 Words   |  6 PagesThe Dangers of Identity Theft Sharae Ernst IFSM 201 – Summer 2012 8/3/2012 â€Å"Identity theft occurs when someone uses your personally identifying information (PII), like your name, Social Security number, or credit card number, without your permission, to commit fraud or other crimes.† (Fighting Back Against Identity Theft: Federal Trade Commission). According to the Federal Trade Commission, identity theft complaints have decreased since year 2008 (314,521 to 250,854). It is estimated by theRead MoreIdentity Theft993 Words   |  4 Pagesridiculous amount of money needed to be paid that you never spent? This is because of identity theft. 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It is said that today’s society is now living in â€Å"The Age of Betrayal.† Since an incident with a busboy in Brooklyn, noRead More Identity Theft Essay966 Words   |  4 Pagespersonal information is safe on the internet. This is not to say that if you log online your identity will be stolen; however, there are some necessary things to learn to protect yourself. The purpose of my project is to help make people aware of these dangers on the internet and how to protect themselves to the best of their abilities. I chose to focus on â€Å"phishing† a new kind of internet theft where millions of e-mails are sent out to vulnerable consumers. This is a serious dangerRead More Identity Theft Essay2149 Words   |  9 PagesIdentity Theft Law enforcement officials have stated that identity theft crime has been one of the fastest growing crimes in the United States. Identity theft is also one of the fastest growing white collar crimes. This is a serious crime. Identity theft is the act of knowingly transferring or using without lawful authority, a means of identification of another person with the intent to commit, or to aid or abet, any unlawful activity that constitutes a violation of federal law, or that constitutes