All Of Us Have To Come Together

My friend Sam Harrelson posted the video of Obama's speech in Canton, Ohio  from 2 days ago. No matter your affiliation, I think you should check it out here.

There was one line in particular that stood out to me above all the others:

Yes, we can argue and debate our positions passionately, but all of us must summon the strength and grace to bridge our differences and unite in common effort; black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, Democrat, Republican, young, old, rich, poor, gay, straight, disabled or not. All of us have to come together.

That is my sentiment exactly. I am tired of the division that both parties exhibit and the division that we as individuals exhibit and the superiority that we feel to those who have different views than we have or who express different religious beliefs. We do not all need to be the same, but we do need to work together. We need to grow in our understanding of each other and stop relying on stereotypes that are perpetuated by our ignorance and our lack of desire to search out the truth about other parties or other religions or other people. There are plenty of issues that we can and will differ on, but there are also plenty that we shouldn't. We need to "unite in common effort" against poverty and against genocide and against imperialism and against hunger. 

This is not a democratic issue or a republican issue. This is not a Christian issue or an Islamic issue. This is not an American issue or an European issue. This is a humanity issue. This is a issue that should resonate within each and every one of us because we are humans and there are fellow human beings that are suffering. We have fellow human beings who are not given the dignity that they deserve as a human. We have fellow human beings who are discriminated against because they have a certain skin color or because they have a certain belief system. 

Our world certainly is not perfect and we will never see it become perfect, but that is no excuse to resign ourselves to accepting the way it is. We must not sit by while injustices prosper. 

This is about you. This is about me. This is about us. All of us have to come together.

The World in Which We Live...

For those who do not know, today is the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s death. Most of us are familiar with the work of MLK and, hopefully, we respect his work. He was indeed the type of man that we need more of in our world. He had his shortcomings as we all do, but he spoke with wisdom words that must be heard. I have been reading his speech, “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence” and came across something quite profound. Part of his speech is pasted below:

Over the past two years, as I have moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my own heart, as I have called for radical departures from the destruction of Vietnam, many persons have questioned me about the wisdom of my path. At the heart of their concerns this query has often loomed large and loud: "Why are you speaking about the war, Dr. King?" "Why are you joining the voices of dissent?" "Peace and civil rights don't mix," they say. "Aren't you hurting the cause of your people," they ask? And when I hear them, though I often understand the source of their concern, I am nevertheless greatly saddened, for such questions mean that the inquirers have not really known me, my commitment or my calling. Indeed, their questions suggest that they do not know the world in which they live.

The last line struck me hard and I began to think. Do I truly know the world that I live in? Do those around me truly know the world that we live in? True, times are different from what they were in 1967 when MLK gave this speech, but much is the same. Do I know how much injustice is in my world? Do I know how many children die of starvation each week? Do I know that 84% of the world lives on less than $10,066 a year? Do I know that more than 1 billion people live on less than U.S. $1 a day? Do I know that there are 781 million illiterate adults worldwide and that 64% of them are women? Do I know that more than 6 million children die from malnutrition yearly? Do I know that there is genocide going on in Darfur? Do I know who is working against these evils? Do I know the good work that the United Nations is doing? Do I know how much inequality still exists not only in our world, but in our churches and our homes? Do I truly know the world in which I live? Do you know the world in which you live?

I am not saying that we should all go out and protest the current war because that’s what MLK did. I am simply saying that we need to get to know the world we live in. Our world is in desperate need of redemption. True, we need redemption in the form of salvation, but we need so much more than that as well. We need to care for all of creation the way that God does. The world has a deep need and we have the resources necessary to not only alleviate, but to erase the need and the pain and yet we do nothing about it. On this anniversary on MLK’s death let us remember him for sure, but let us also reflect. Let us see our world for what it really is. The facts are gloomy and can be disheartening, but we can offer hope.

Here are some sites that you should check out:

• ONE
• Compassion
• Kiva
• JesusGreaterThan
• UN Millennium Development Goals

Note: Statistics taken from Compassion.

UN Millennium Development Goals

If you haven't heard of the good work that the UN is trying to do you need to.

The UN has developed a list of 8 goals that they wish to see accomplished by the year 2015. The 8 goals are:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development

Their website outlines each goal and also monitors how these goals are being met. Please check out their site and see how you can be a part of meeting these goals.

Changing the world...

A friend of mine just recently left me a message saying that he loved my new blog and that it felt like we were sitting in my room changing the world again.

The truth: we never changed the world.

We talked a lot about the world, but we never changed it. Does that stop us? No. We see need for change in our world and we desire so badly for it to happen. The change is not just needed in religious areas (though there is great change possible there), but also in the political realm and the scientific realm and the music realm and the food realm and the publishing realm and the entertainment realm and the realm of people's desire and the lack of reading realm and the healthcare realm and the worldwide poverty realm and the familial relationships realm and the holiday realm and so many other realms.

The truth is that we lived a completely screwed up world, but this does not stop us. We do not allow ourselves to get depressed and pessimistic about the situation of our world. Rather, we imagine. That's right, we imagine. You may be asking how imagining can do anything to change the world. And you'd be right to ask. But I'd also have to say that if you are asking that question you have not imagined often enough or hard enough or deep enough. We imagine, just like John Lennon. We imagine a world that is better than the one we currently live in and we imagine what it would take to see that world come to fruition and then we work with every ounce of our being and our soul to be that change to this world. We help raise awareness for issues like the genocide in Darfur and the utter poverty in our own country and the amazing omnipresence of hypocrisy within the religion that we claim as our own (Christianity).

I echo John Lennon when he said, "You may say that I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one." I have been told countless times in my life: "Thomas, one person can't change the world." I reply that yes, one person can. How many times have we seen it. Jesus pretty drastically changed the world (and I don't say this in a super-spiritual-look-at-me-the-good-Christian way, but in an honest way that any student of history, especially religious history, as I am, must admit) and Ghandi wasn't too shabby either. Should we mention the work of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Tim Berners-Lee (step over Al Gore, he actually did create the Internet) or Mikhail Gorbachev or Frances Crick, James Watson and Rosalind Franklin (the three who discovered DNA). And just so you know that I recognize the other side of the coin. Let's talk about what Adlof Hitler and Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini and Osama bin Laden. I hope you get my point. We have the ability to do so much more than we tell ourselves that we can.

I am trying to change the world by changing myself and being the change that I want to see. You can do the same.

P.S. If you are looking for maybe an organization or two to get involved with there are two that I would suggest you start with, as they are doing what I'm talking about in the area of poverty and equality. They are making things happen and truly changing lives. The two organizations are Compassion and Kiva.

Francisco da Silva Neto

Say hello to Francisco. Francisco lives in Brazil with his father and mother.

I sponsor Francisco through Compassion. I was writing him a letter tonight and thought to let you meet him and to consider sponsoring a child yourself. It only costs $32 a month and my wife and I each sponsor a child. Compassion is a fantastic organization and currently helps more than 900,000 children in 24 countries. Please consider it. Besides, how big of a deal is $32 a month to you? I can promise you that my wife and I are strapped financially as we have been married for 6 months, are both graduate students and both work part time at out church. We don't have a ton of money, but we do realize that we can use the money we do have for good, to help those who have far less than we do.

For more information you can visit Compassion's Website or click on the banner on the right side of the page.

A Few Words on Freedom

With the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor coming on Friday I decided to post this. It was originally posted on my former blog on 3/29/07.

Let us start this post out with me laying some things bare about myself. I have issues. State it anyway you wish, but I have issues and if my other posts have not clued you into that fact yet, then I feel quite confident that this one will. This post will probably also offend you. Apologies will be issued for neither of those facts. Moreover, this post will most likely touch on another topic other than just freedom, namely equality. For, it seems self-evident to me that these two concepts are inextricably related and to attempt to reverse the tethering that is present would not only be unwise, but also irresponsible.

So, then what is freedom? I'm sure that we could all give nice succinct answers to this question that may have something to do with the lack of any oppressing forces, etc. However, I would like to take the long way before we arrive out our destination of freedom, if indeed we do end up at freedom. The first thing that I must say about freedom is that we do not value it. We purport that we value it above all else, but our actions scream another story. For instance, just 2 days ago Serena Williams (world-famous tennis player, black, sister of Venus Williams) was at a match and there was a man in the stands that was heckling her. By all accounts of the story all he did was heckle. He was very much annoying and disrespectful, but all he did was heckle. Nothing he did or said put Serena Williams or any of the other fans in any danger whatsoever. Yet, Serena stopped play and spoke with the Chair Umpire and forced them to remove the man and disallow him from ever returning. Since when is heckling disallowed in sports?

Now, you may be asking what he said and that is a fine question to ask. Most of it was the usual heckling though he did say: "…hit the ball into the net like any Negro would." It was this word that set Serena off. As she was sitting on her bench waiting for the officials to remove the man she was quite hysterical saying that the man could be a stalker and other things like that, but I was absolutely floored when I heard the following words come out of her mouth: "I'm an African-American and I won't stand for that!" WHAT?! Who does she think she is? Is she even really an African-American? Are any of her ancestors from Africa? (New note: Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan) If they are, then fine, but what does her being an African-American have to do with anything? The man said a word that offended you and you expect the law to make him stop. Doesn't the First Amendment of our Constitution guarantee freedom of speech? Well, apparently it doesn't. It guarantees free speech when it doesn't offend someone, or better yet, when it doesn't offend a certain group. If I am on that court and someone of another race is heckling me and calls me something meant to be derogatory, such as maybe insinuating that my ancestors were slave owners or calling me a "cracker" or saying that I was a Nazi, and I asked for that person to be removed because "I'm a German-American and I won't stand for that," I would be laughed at (I am German-American by the way, my biological father was full-blood German. However, another issue I have is that I am an idiot if I demand that people call me German-American instead of Caucasian or white. I do not expect that everyone will know my heritage when they see me and neither should blacks expect others to know their's when other see them.

When will this country realize that not every single black person is of African descent? In fact, quite a large number of them are from Haiti and other countries south of us, yet they still insist on being called African-American so as to preserve something about their ancestry when really they have thrown it away by not taking the time to learn their real ancestry). We only value freedom when it is beneficial to us and the same is true with equality. Women and blacks (Please let it be understood that the generalizations do not mean that I truly think all women and all black people are the same and think and act the same way, for I do not. However, the generality is necessary for the ease of the flow of the language used herein) have desired equality for some time and I have absolutely no problem with them having it, but if they have it, then it needs to be real. Women say that they want equality, but they don't want to be drafted. Blacks say that they want equality, yet they expect for certain words to be outlawed when used against them, but not when they use those same words amongst themselves. Also, they expect laws to protect them from being offended, but do not want others to have similar laws. I understand that the word 'nigger' evokes many emotions and is often used in a derogatory sense, but what about all of the other racial slurs directed against Asians and Mexicans? No one is up in arms about those being used. People simply realize the idiocy of the persons using those words and they move on with their lives. So I have to ask: "What do we value most?" I believe that at this point in our history we value not offending black people.

Now, you may vehemently disagree and that is perfectly acceptable. I do not think that has always been our value (I know I am stating the obvious). Our country was founded by those who said that they desired religious freedom, but that was a sack of shit. They didn't truly value religious freedom any more than we truly value freedom of speech today. For, if they did, then they would have been okay with those persons who desired to practice religions other than theirs, but I think that our history tells us quite well, that that was not the case. The Japanese Internment camps that followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 show me once again that our country does not value freedom. We value plenty of things – power, safety, comfort, not offending certain people, security – but to say that we value freedom seems to be to be a bold faced lie! The same is true with equality. Our Declaration of Independence says that "all men were created equal." And in that statement asserted quite the opposite, for they were intentional in making it only read "men" as opposed to "men and women" and they did not even follow through with what they had written. For, they enslaved blacks for almost another hundred years after that.

Though the bulk of this blog may seem to be directed at one group, please hear my heart when I say that it is not. It is directed at everyone in this country, be they black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, young, old, in between. It doesn't matter to me. What does matter is that we do not value freedom, yet lie to ourselves and the rest of the world about it constantly. The mere presence of government shows that we made the decision a long time ago to give up certain freedoms for safety and security. I am not saying that all of this is wrong, what is wrong is when we scream and yell, often like children, for freedom and equality when freedom and equality are not what we really want. We want power. We want safety. We want security. We want people to agree with us. We want to not be offended. We want many things, but I cannot say with any confidence that true freedom and true equality are among the desires of our hearts.