Entitlement

When did the word entitlement begin to take on such a bad connotation? It used to be that we could use the word entitlement to be a good thing ... if one pays the ticket fee at the box office, they are entitled to view a movie. It used to even say on some tickets "this ticket entitles the bearer to ..." but somehow in the last few years the word entitlement has begun to carry with it a considerable amount of baggage and negativity.

I discovered the other day when I was driving through downtown Oakland several examples of entitlement and why we use that word in a negative connotation.

Story 1. I am waiting at a traffic light (it was red in my direction). As a good driver, I was watching the cross traffic, noticing the light in the other direction turning yellow, then red. Making sure any on-coming cars were stopped (or slowing considerably) before considering to "go" when the light in my direction turned green. Just as the light turned green in my direction, three women ran across the road in front of me (did I mention this is a 4 lane road, so they ran in front of others as well). If this weren't enough, when they safely (because the cars all did as I did and stayed stopped, dumbfounded that anyone would be so stupid to cross a 4-lane road against the light) reached the other side, the woman in front of the group turned and gave all of the waiting cars the finger! No, no one honked at this group of law-breakers, still this woman seemed to send a clear signal, "I am entitled to cross the road when I want, where I want, and there's not a @#$%! thing you can do about it"

Story 2. Further along in the same trip, I was approaching another traffic light, I noticed it to be red for some time as I approached it and I could see that the light in the other direction was turning yellow ... so I slowed, but figured by the time I got to the light, it would be green. As the light turned green in my direction, a bicyclist traveling on the cross-street continued to ride at full-speed through the intersection. I can imagine the though in his head being, "it takes me a lot more effort to get going again from a stop than it does for that driver to use his brakes, so I'm just going to keep going, after all, my use of a bicycle entitles me to interpret the laws in a way most convenient to me."

Story 3. Yet further along the same trip, I was traveling down a one-way road when, to my surprise, coming straight at me was a bicyclist. Does he not know that he needs to follow the same traffic laws as cars? Possibly. More likely by the meandering way he was riding he was thinking, "this is the shortest route to where I need to go, I'm small enough to ride past the on-coming cars, so I'm going to do it, and they'll get out of my way."

Yes, I admit, there are times when I find myself in a similar situation of thinking that I can get away with things or that because I would otherwise be inconvenienced that I can do something I shouldn't, so it go me thinking is this sense of "entitlement" as a negative concept something that comes with Generation X or Generation Y ... and my answer is "NO" ... it's clearly something that is pervasive to our American culture. The culture that says, "I need to be first, so I'll do whatever it takes to get there."

This attitude of entitlement is not new. As I led a Bible Study last night, we talked about the parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) and how the laborers who had been there all day felt entitled to greater wages than those that worked for only an hour. We talked also about the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) and how the younger son felt entitled to his inheritance before his father died, and the older son felt entitled to begrudge his younger brother because he squandered the inheritance. Still, Jesus teaches us a better way, and if we are called to be Christians in this day and age and in this culture, then we too must follow this better way. At the end of the parable of laborers in the vineyard, Jesus teaches simply, "the last shall be first and the first shall be last."

Clearly, we may feel entitled to be first, to do for us, but by doing so we end up last. If on the other hand we put others before us, serve them with a cheerful heart, and love our neighbor as ourselves, well, we may end up last in this world, but does that really matter?