Honor Thy Fallen
Lately myself along with the rest of the country have watched on the news, and perhaps in person the descent of civilized culture into riots in the streets. While I have no problem with peaceful protests, there is a big difference between a protest and a riot. When you are in the streets and you are calling for the destruction of property, spouting hate left and right, all protected rights in speech should be and are rescinded. While I am choosing not to take a side in this particular political stance, I would like to take the stance on peace and love. Romans 13:13 ““Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.” While I will take the stance that the KKK, Neo Nazi’s, Black Panthers, they all are wildly inappropriate for the age. I find it quite sad that in today’s world there’s still a measure of hate to this degree. While I believe in the constitution and as I once swore an oath to protect it against all enemies foreign and domestic, that means the entire thing, not just the parts I like, and it doesn’t mean ignore the parts I don’t. While I do believe that freedom of speech has its limits, along with many of the others such as the 2nd amendment, I am a firm believer in your right to peaceful assembly.
Let us take a brief moment to really think about what we’re doing as a nation. In the last 5 years as ISIS moved through city after city and it destroyed artifacts of different cultures, different religions some were over a thousand years old, we as a country watched on television in horror and disgust. No respect many of the viewers said. Today as we watch on TV countless statues and monuments that may not be quite a hundred years old are being torn down, desecrated by angery protestors. My question is what’s the difference? While the left claims they want the ability to coexist are we really doing that? While the Right claims it’s taking the moral high ground, I question if that’s the case also. The left has the black Panthers, which during the last Presidential election with Barack Obama the Panthers stood outside voting places and used intimidation and threatening tactics to push away white Republican voters. While the KKK and Neo Nazi’s protest for the opposite things, I saw that, and while I find both utterly deplorable, it is their right to peaceful public assembly. While I’m not a fan of spouting hate in either direction, I would like to point out how inappropriate it is to group everyone together by allowing false stigmas to rule the day. I would not want anyone to consider me to be the same as someone who belongs to the Westboro Baptist Church. While I am a white male, who attends a predominately white Baptist Church, and while I currently live in the south, does that automatically make me racist? No of course it doesn’t. And while my view may not be the average, perhaps it is.
I believe that racism is an ignorant state of mind and should be a relic of the past. While unfortunate it still exists, it is believed that it only exists because it’s still taught and passed on. Hate is largely a learned trait by the world. 1 John 4:20 “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” I am not a perfect man, but I do believe that the strife and discord going on within our fallen nation is a direct contradiction to the teachings found within the Bible. Proverbs 6:16-19 “16 These six [things] doth the LORD hate: yea, seven [are] an abomination unto him: 17 A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, 18 An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, 19 A false witness [that] speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” While I believe in the peaceful gathering to support an ideal or ideology, I believe once you start to destroy property, throw things, light buildings on fire, basically turn from a protest to plundering and discord, that’s when we no longer honor the Father.
We can disagree without the anger and hate. We can disagree without fighting amongst one another. We can instead respect the differences and speak with grace. Ephesians 4:29 “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” No matter if you like it or not Confederate soldiers despite what the war was for, or not for, are U.S. Veterans, and disserve respect. Desecrating monuments because they honor soldiers even ones who fought in a war that had a small portion of its cause to slavery. We fight and riot for something that happened 150 years ago, something that was long enough ago that no one today has been affected by it at all. We’ve seen some of the most influential Americans be of African decent and yet someone claim that racism is the cause that keeps anyone from achieving their goals in life. I myself grew up poor, bouncing from home to home. While I was always around loving people I never knew some of the luxuries may others around me knew. Even to this day, a guy I knew had not one but two houses and one of his houses was twice the size of my own. He lived a life with far more wealth then I may ever know in my life. It had nothing to do with color, just shear will and circumstance. We’ve had a president, high cabinet members, judges, doctors, CEO’s, all from African decent. Any white person in the city of Detroit has the same struggles as any black person from the city of Detroit. Pigment is only skin deep, and has nothing to do with how we present ourselves, how we treat others, the lives or path we choose is our choice and ours alone.
In World War II we as a nation imprisoned thousands of Asian immigrants all because members of their ‘race’ attacked us the morning of December 7th 1941 by the Empire of Japan. We condemned our own citizens on the acts of a country they no longer lived in. While some of them may have been spies, that doesn’t justify what we did as a country. However wrong that injustice was, the Asian community isn’t reeling in discord. We are not as a nation fighting for the injustices that happen daily within our own boarders but something that happened 150 years ago we just can’t seem to forget. Child sex trafficking happens every day, human slave trade occurs right under our nose at every major event like the Super bowl, but no one stands up against that kind of slavery. No one stands up against the injustice of child soldiers around the world as we speak, or the child laborers who work in slave shops all over the world some making the precious items you love to buy. Why are we so consumed with breaking down our own statues but we say nothing of the pyramids that were built by the hands by Jewish Slaves. We are content with destroying history instead of using them as a reminder so we may never travel down the same path again. Why we allow some injustices to go unnoticed, while others anger the mob to burn down our own cities with pitchforks and torches. We aren’t some monster horror film, and yet we are as content to destroy everything to kill the faceless monster. Are their bigots, sure there are, but we seem to have adopted this all or nothing attitude. We must take a step back and realize that the actions of the many 152 years ago do not dictate the actions of the many now, simply put, the actions of the minority should not implicate the majority. If not every black person wants to be labeled as a thug, not every white person wants to be labeled as racist. And to both sides, I’d say get over it. You’re all part of the same race, and no matter the pigment of your skin, or the country from which you hale, you’re all human beings under One God. God doesn’t see your ethnicity, simply His children, and I don’t think He’d be too happy watching his children bicker and fight as we are. Get it together America, stop fighting amongst yourselves and watch the real enemy. War perhaps is coming and we need to be focused on repairing bonds, not division.
While I realize this will not sit well with many, I would like to point out that whatever the injustice God will be the one to grant justice. No matter what side of the fence you sit on, judgment is for the Lord alone. No matter what side of the fence you sit on hate is not the way because it is not the teaching of the Lord above. Love is the only way to fight hate, the only way to overcome an injustice. Forgiveness and allowing the past to be the past and only learning from it, not to relive it day in and day out. Atrocities are done every day, and every day the Lord shall pass judgment and with God’s guidance we can find hope in forgiveness, and peace in love.
The Arrow Preacher 