Tag Archives: human-rights

America: Straying from the Faith of the Founders when it comes to caring for others

There is an argument often heard from the ultra religious and echoed by their politicians that America is a Christian nation. While it was not founded as to be a specifically and exclusively Christian nation (an argument I will save for a later posting), I wish to address how this claim is not being followed using the Christian bible so that those who claim to be Christians and claim America as a Christian nation so adamantly, while ignoring the most basic of Christian tenets, will hopefully understand how they stray from the faith they claim to follow.

Most of us know that the Puritans who came here on the Mayflower wanted the New World to be as John Winthrop called it, “A City upon a Hill.” He said that if
“we deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause him to withdraw his present help for us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God and all professors of God’s sake; we shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to become curses upon us until we be consumed out of the good land where we are going”.

We, as a country, have lost sight of this and are becoming like Cain after murdering his brother Abel. The wealthy of our country especially are like Cain when asked about how they are helping those less fortunate than themselves. They are like to respond in the same manner by saying, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Genesis 4:9). They are turning their backs on those who work for them as we see corporate presidents and CEOs earning millions while their workers earn hundreds of times less with many of them resorting to have to collect welfare or food stamps just to feed themselves and their families. They are supporting sweatshops where hundreds to thousands of children and women in poor countries slave in deplorable conditions to make goods that are sold for huge profits and those making the goods see nowhere near a decent wage even for the places where they live. There are people who do not have health insurance who watch their loved ones die or who themselves die for lack of money to pay for care; while certain politicians, many of whom claim to be on the side of Christian values, fight to repeal a law that would provide all people with healthcare that could save lives. Ironically, those politicians and their wealthy donors, especially those who claim to be on a higher moral plane, act like the scribes that Jesus cautions his disciples to be wary of when he said,

“Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers”(Mark 12:38-40).

These people do just that. They expect to be revered, respected, and have the right to the very best while others suffer to pay bills and just to survive. They cry out that it is not fair to tax the wealthy who can afford to pay more in taxes. They also cry out that the poor are just lazy and should be able to help themselves rather than receive help from them. They make a show out of their charitable giving to those poor, but talk disparagingly about them when not in the spotlight. Look and see how generous that I am, is their mantra while their hearts are coveting more wealth that could keep the poor from their station in life.

Am I advocating that wealth is bad? Not in the least, but the greed of so many who have wealth and their desire to keep the poor down in their lives, is evil. It is not money that is evil, but the love of money that is evil according to the same scriptures that many of those keeping the poor down claim to ascribe. They say they believe in charity, but in their hearts, they do not.

They love money more than their neighbor. In doing so, they also love money more than God. If Christians are admonished to “love their neighbor” like they love themselves (Mark 12:33), then these self-righteous people either hate themselves or are being hypocritical in their faith. In addition, they—the wealthy politicians and their wealthy donors—cry about paying more in taxes while forgetting that Christians are to “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17). If money is printed by the State, then it is right and even Christian duty to pay the State their proportionately fair share of taxes.

America cannot be a Christian nation as long as these wrongs continue to occur. Until the wealthy and their political lapdogs realize that with wealth also entails responsibility to care for those who are less fortunate, as they are admonished to do in the Christian scriptures, then the claim of being a Christian nation is a farce. It is a sinful, travesty of a farce at that. As John Winthrop ends his famous sermon, he states,

“Beloved there is now sett before us life, and good, deathe and evill in that wee are Commaunded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another to walke in his wayes and to keepe his Commaundements and his Ordinance, and his lawes, and the Articles of our Covenant with him that wee may live and be multiplyed, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whether wee goe to possesse it: But if our heartes shall turne away soe that wee will not obey, but shall be seduced and worshipp other Gods our pleasures, and proffitts, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, wee shall surely perishe out of the good Land whether wee passe over this vast Sea to possesse it;”

As a nation, we have been seduced to the worship of other Gods (power and wealth being the foremost) and the worship of profits over people, we are dooming ourselves to perish from our greed and self-love.

Is there hope? Is there hope that we can yet attain the status of being a light unto the nations? Yes, there is always hope. So long as there are those who fight the injustices in our country, there is hope. So long as there are those who stand up and speak for those who are afraid to speak or cannot speak out, there is hope. So long as there are those who defend the helpless and befriend the friendless, there is hope. So long as there are those who represent the will of the people rather than the will of corporate interests and greed, there is hope.

Where does that hope start for you? Are you willing to be a catalyst for that hope? Are you willing to be the spark that ignites the fires of a peaceful revolution for the betterment of all people? Are you willing to be the light that cuts through the darkness of despair or will you just continue to curse the darkness and, in your lack of action, be an accomplice for the darkness? You must answer these questions in the affirmative if the hope is to stay alive.

Real Americans

I recently had a person respond to a comment I made on a Facebook post deriding me for my concept of what an American is and is not. I commented that America is not what it once was and that it has gotten to be a place vastly different from where I was born and raised. This becomes even more apparent to me since I am temporarily living outside of the States due to family employment. I am gaining a much different perspective on the US while living in Canada and being able to visit my native land on occasion. What I am seeing, in addition to what I hear from my neighbors and acquaintances, saddens me sometimes when I think of the potential that exists in the United States to do so much more with the wealth that is there than what is currently occurring. What has happened to my country? To our country? Why are we acting the way we are? What exactly is a real American?

As I see this becoming more of a series of posts rather than one concise posting, I will just touch on the one concept that bothers me. That concept is what a ‘real’ American is. When I was growing up, an American was someone who was either born in the United States or immigrated to the United States and worked his or her way to citizenship. It could also be a child born overseas to US parents or even to one US parent. Sounds simple enough. I even think it is still the legal definition of what an American is. So, what happened?

The scene is becoming increasingly common. Someone asks another person the question, “What are you?” I heard this often from students I taught and even neighbors where I once lived in Florida. They asked me this. They asked others this. They did this in a quest to place a person in a box. Ironically, the people asking the question were usually white and they asked this question to someone who was not White, more than those who are white. Interesting. The concept of what a “real” American has devolved in some way to mean a person who is not Caucasian. Given the skin tone of most Native Americans is not Caucasian that makes the question both rather idiotic as well as rather insidious.

The idiocy stems from the fact that the United States is a mixture of people and cultures far beyond those from Northern Europe. The Southwestern Untied States has people from Mexico, Central and South America. They were there before the first Europeans arrived. The rest of the United States was once vastly inhabited by Native Americans who, as I mentioned before, are predominantly non-Caucasian. After Europeans arrived, many others started immigrating to the United States and settled here. Some Asians were brought over to work on the West Coast and help build the once vast railroad network. African-Americans were brought over both as slaves and some came as free persons. If something happened somewhere in the world, people came to the United States to change their lives for the better. The United States earned and enjoyed being called the Melting Pot of the world. Our country is a land of diversity. That diversity once made us great. We fought a Civil War and went through the Civil Rights movement to make all races seen as equal. It set us apart from many countries in the world where the make-up of the people is the same. Somehow, the love of our diversity has morphed into division.

Part of this idiocy has been manufactured in the form of certain media outlets attacking the skin color of our current president. He presents a quandary for what was once the majority of the American population. President Obama is neither entirely Black nor is he entirely White. He is of mixed race. That mixture seems to have scared some people who are just too xenophobic to realize that being of mixed race is okay. Perhaps these same people once advocated laws that banned intermarriage between people of different races. They saw that taboo fall with the advent of Civil Rights and dealt with it. However, when the leader of their country became someone with those qualities, they could not handle it. Therefore, we have seen a rise in those who question his citizenship and even hate him for being someone they cannot place in a box.

These same people have taken this even further and started to question their neighbors being citizens or not based on skin color or religious beliefs. Somehow, this has also changed into questioning someone’s citizenship or loyalty to his or her country. Recently, we heard of a young man who is of Mexican descent who was ridiculed when he sang the National Anthem at a basketball game. Even though he was born in the United States and is therefore a citizen, people were accusing him of being an illegal immigrant to the United States simply because of his cultural background. What difference should it make when it comes to his being an American? We are a nation of immigrants. Look at the names in the telephone directory. They are all not European names. They are names from the world pantheon of names. With those names are cultures, religions, and lifestyles that all blend to make the United States unique and wonderful. It is a shame to disparage anyone based on his or her cultural background.

Here, in Canada, the question is not asked as “What are you?”, but rather “What is your cultural background?” Yes, that may simply sound like a politically correct way to ask the same thing, but it goes beyond that. It acknowledges that the person is a human being first, and then presents a curiosity about what that person believes, practices, or lives. It is less combative, in part, due to the length of the sentence, but also due to the nature of the words used. Perhaps we, as citizens of the United States, should take this and apply it to our country. No, Canada is not perfect. No country is perfect, but imagine if we started viewing each other as people first, then whatever culture, religion, gender, gender preference, or whatever box that is needed to make us feel better. We would be better able to define a ‘real’ American as someone who loves our country because she or he was born here or immigrated here for a better life.

Paths to the same Eternity

The idea that we are at war with any religion is ludicrous. We are at war with extremists. We are at war with those who believe that they have the right to harm others to further their cause. Religion plays no real part in the war in which we are now engaged. The only ones who believe so are the extremists on their side and on our side.
Recently, a so-called member of the media called for the extermination of those who are Islamic in faith in the event the perpetrators of the tragedy in Boston happened to be Islamic. In doing so, he placed himself at the level of those who call for the extermination of all Christians as well as those who once called for the extermination of the Jews. Hate is not the cornerstone of any of the main religions of the world. Jesus preached that Christians were to love everyone. Mohammed preached to care for others and that is a basic tenet of the Islamic faith. The Jewish faith calls for love as well. Buddhism calls for peace and love. There is no call for killing anyone based solely on faith. We are at war for a variety of reasons, but none of them is about religion.
Rather than listen to the idle ramblings of the extremists, we need more people to speak the truth that we are in this world together. We may not like one another, but we need to do our best to get along by finding the common ground we share as humans and focusing on it rather than one what divides us. We may even find out that our religious beliefs are not that different either. We are all on different paths to the same eternity. If we would just focus on the journey rather than the path, we might get along better.