I posted the picture of Amy and I, planning to post a blog along with it, but the thoughts are still swirling and in draft form, so more on that later
Lately I have been thinking about something else. I am working for a pretty amazing guy, Stephen Black. He doesn't believe in charity, but does believe in social justice. He graduated from Yale, but came back to Alabama because he really believes that things here can change. That even though the school system is crap, there are teenagers that deserve a chance. Even though there are children that can't read because their eyesight sucks, he can raise money to test their vision on his own. Most of all, he believes that even though there are some that are born with more and some with less, all deserve equal chances.
We live in a country of extremes. When I first came back from China it was almost overwhelming. Everywhere I looked there was excess: money, food, cars, clothes, more, more, more. And yet in the midst of the wealth, there is poverty. How can we live in a country where people literally have billions of dollars, and some eat out of garbage cans? The icing on the cake is that we are a "Christian Nation". We go on holy missions to make sure that people in other lands have "freedom" and lable it a moral imperitave, and yet somehow a starving child, a child who cannot afford to go to college, an old woman that cuts her pills three times to make them 'last longer' is not a moral imperative.
There is a really powerful article that speaks to this "Chrisitan Paradox". In the article the author takes several tenets of basic Christianity, and asks, "How's America doing?" and then answers it.
My question to you is, how do you think America is doing?
Instead of God Bless America, should it really be God Forgive America?
6 comments:
hmmmmm.. .sometimes i wonder if there is another dimension of life that we tap into in our subconscious because I've been thinking these same things-maybe we had coffee in our sleep and discussed this already on another planet. I've been working a lot with Illegal immigrants. Of course i'm a little biased, but still it is heartbreaking. I'm going to DC for the weekend, maybe I'll have more gathered thoughts.
I enjoyed this though. Is it ever weird for you to come back through Customs and be embarressed to walk through the "Citizens" line?
you remember that Alberto was so annoyed just by me sitting next to him, because I had the big BLUE passport in hand, and automatically he thought "Jeeze, here we go..." But then it turned out to be the luckiest flight of his life... and it still continues twisting and turning, doesn't it my little nymph Stefania?
ps, I wish we really could sit and have coffee sometime. Maybe a cherry limeaid. I have a Sonic less than a mile from my house. When I realized it last week, I was so pumped! I was like, oh! Steph HAS to come, now!
you are such a tease. i hate you. . . does alberto have your blog link? steph
do you have any idea how frustrating it is to need to talk to your best friends after being with a guy and no one is there to pick up the stinkin' phone. unbelievable.
Charles Reed has a really interesting piece relating to this theme as well. Some excerpts:
The secular ruling ideology is convinced that Jesus Christ was wrong when he said you can't serve both God and money. With the support of most Christians, it practices the secular economic values of the Russian-born atheist Ayn Rand-the gospel of greed.
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The secular ruling ideology would collapse without the support of its religious base. Since it reflects Nihilistic and relativistic values that are the antithesis of Christian values, why do Christians support it?
The Christian values tell us to love our enemies, love our neighbors as ourselves, and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. The secular ruling ideology, on the other hand, cultivates hate, fear, violence, greed and exploitation.
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Who would have dreamed that Christians would support military invasions to build a secular corporate empire-an empire to rule the world by force? We are now reaping the results of that ideology: large scale death, destruction and division at home and around the world. In the words of Martin Luther King, "We've got some difficult days ahead." As the curtain begins to descend on the ugliest chapter in American history, the question will inevitably be asked, "Where was the church?"
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