Reflective Journal #2

 





The main ideas this week centered on being the change in our communities and in the world.

What does this mean to me?  What is my role?

These are two of the questions that the materials studied this week tried to answer or inspire internal searching to answer. Martin Luther said that any work could be a calling if in was done in service to mankind. John Calvin stated that we are all endowed with talents and gifts with an imperative that we should use them to serve our fellow men. 

There are many heresies that are associated with being the change, including that it can happen if we are lucky, there is only one true calling for each of us, that bliss will come from our calling, that we will get praise of the world or that work gives life meaning but these are not true. The goal with being the change is how can we do good-better, in a self-sustaining way that can be scalable and replicable? Everyone can be a part of being a change. Finding ways to contribute and how you can gain experience to help in a more productive way will help develop greater potential social innovations. Fabio Rosa was so dedicated to improving rural Brazilian families access to electricity and thereby their livelihoods that he dedicated decades of his life and did not give up when he experienced setbacks from the government, electric company, financial issues and methods that did not work the first time. It is important to continue to evolve and work towards goals.

https://youtu.be/6UpP3uqAq7E

This week’s video Ted Talk “Inside the Mind of a College Social Innovator was very interesting to me. What struck me was that each student had completely different interests and skills. They also had different perspectives on what they wanted to do with their lives, but they were each social innovators. I appreciated Jace’s accounting background and the way he was able to use that to help a friend’s business in Uganda. I had not thought about my specific skills in performing, public speaking or community organization as being useful in social innovation. I believe strongly in community involvement and in being a positive influence but had never connected that with using those desires and my skills to be more innovative. I was impressed that everyone can be part of social innovation and contribute in meaningful ways.



Jefferson Thomas’s article, What is Your Calling in Life, had two very important viewpoints. Martin Luther believed that any work could be a calling if it was used in service of mankind and John Calvin posited that it is our duty to find out what our divinely endowed talents and gifts are and to seek to use them to benefit our fellow men. This correlated with the gospel of Jesus Christ when He said that the greatest commandment is to love God and the second is to love our neighbors as ourselves. (Matthew 22:36-39 King James Version) We are commanded to love others and part of that love is serving and working to benefit mankind. Social innovation is finding ways to help impact society for good and to do good in a better, more effective, more sustainable way. It is more than just giving money, it is giving of ourselves in order to improve other people’s lives. The gospel of Jesus Christ is all about helping others and improving lives which is the aim of social innovation and something that everyone can be a part of.



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