~Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics podcast “The Truth Is Out There…Isn’t it?”

~Molly Shannon, Superstar

turned to a God that we can use rather than to a God we must obey; we have turned to a God who will fulfill our needs rather than to a God before whom we must surrender our rights to ourselves. He is a God for us, for our satisfaction — not because we have learned to think of him in this way through Christ but because we have learned to think of him in this way through the marketplace. In the marketplace, everything is for us, for our pleasure, for our satisfaction, and we have come to assume that it must be so in the church as well. And so we transform the God of mercy into the God who is at our mercy…if the sunshine of his benign grace fails to warm us as we expect, if he fails to shower prosperity and success on us, we will find ourselves unable to believe in him anymore.

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
~Eleanor Roosevelt

I work in a manufacturing environment that sits next to our national office. As a result you wind up with people in uniforms from the manufacturing environment and people from the national office who wear business casual. It’s easy to perceive this as a class distinction. Folks in the manufacturing environment allow themselves to feel this class distinction, to feel inferior. The same could go for people who work in cubicles versus having an office. It’s a perceived class distinction. You can choose to believe it or choose not to. It all comes down to fear and self-confidence. Are you going to allow a uniform or a cubicle to define your worth?

“Childhood is what you spend the rest of your life trying to overcome.”
~Birdee Pruitt