As middle-upper class, Christian Americans, one of our most important jobs in life is raising awareness. More important than reaching a spiritual awakening, letting people know you’re volunteering or doing any actual, real work is the call to put our trust fund checks and free time during the weekend towards letting people know that certain things are, in fact, happening.
It is not enough to go and help someone. With that, you can only hope to change one person’s life. However, if we can raise awareness by simply informing people, there is a chance that we can deliver water to a village, bring down a dictator or at the very least contribute to a delightful two days of social (media) activism.
But I find a fault in our continuous, Godly quest to raise awareness about Africans and hunger and decade old tribal warfare. We have spread our awareness so thin between continents and villages and wells that we are blind to our own surroundings. Things pass us by every day and we are oblivious.
What color shirt did the girl in front of you at Starbucks have on this morning? How many people were sitting down in chapel today? How many times did the professor say “this will be on the test” while you quietly online shopped in the back of a $1500 class?
You probably can’t answer any of these.
Enough is enough.
This is why I am beginning my campaign to raise awareness.
It’s time for us to keep our head on a swivel. To sleep with one eye open. To put down our iPhones and actually notice something about the person talking to us.
If you’re interested in supporting awareness, you can contribute to the campaign by buying a wristband. It won’t make you more conscious of your environment, but the money goes to the Awareness Fund which helps teach underprivileged kids to notice their surroundings (most likely violence and poverty).
I beg of you to share your impassioned pleas through Facebook and Twitter and let the world know that it is time for environmental ignorance to cease. With the power of the internet, we can truly change the world from the climate controlled comfort of our own rooms.
And in a week, when the world as moved on, we may not have done anything at all, but at least we can feel good about ourselves.
