The ugly Islamophobia in the media coverage of the San Bernardino shooting
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/3/9845166/islamophobia-san-bernardino-shooting
The ugly Islamophobia in the media coverage of the San Bernardino shooting
http://www.vox.com/2015/12/3/9845166/islamophobia-san-bernardino-shooting
***** Jesus was a human. He gave us none of the outs that we give ourselves. He was an absolutist and he told us to be the same. Love as I have loved. Do unto others all that you would have them do unto you. Pick up your cross. The good shepherd lays down her life for the sheep. As you do unto the least of these you do unto me. He gave us not one excuse, not one out, not one bit of leeway. Any more than in loving us he might have said, hey, it is okay if you usually do not eat poison, deadly poison, but it is ok if sometimes you do. Selfishness is poison. He told us that in every way possible. We don't like the answer so we deny deny deny deny deny deny. I never thought, & I still don't think, it was ever about forgiveness, being better than, being worse than..... I think it was always about joy or suffering. And I think he was trying to tell us that selfishness, although it seems like a good idea, is deadly, slow acting, poison. Of course, I might be wrong. But every day, every study, every experience... tells me that this is correct.
I have come to believe that this is what Jesus lived and taught and that by violating it for 2000 years we have brought on ourselves near certain and total destruction of all that is good in the world. This gets clearer to me with every passing moment. The best of us convinces our self that it is okay to live with greater resources allocated to ourselves than to our neediest sisters and brothers. I believe that Jesus said, and lived, no.
Your thoughts? If Jesus were alive today, he and his immediate disciples, they would be A. Homeless and poor, B. Middle class, C. Upper class economically? Please respond. Would they live in full solidarity with the world's neediest, or not?
Chris Hedges, Wages of Rebellion: Our terror is delivered daily to the wretched of the earth with industrial weapons. But to us, it is invisible. We do not stand over the decapitated and eviscerated bodies left behind on city and village streets by our missiles, drones, and fighter jets. We do not listen to the wails and shrieks of parents embracing the shattered bodies of their children. We do not see the survivors of air attacks bury their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters. We are not conscious of the long night of collective humiliation, repression, and powerlessness that characterizes existence in Israel’s occupied territories, Iraq, and Afghanistan. We do not see the boiling anger that war and injustice turn into a cauldron of hate over time. We are not aware of the very natural lust for revenge against those who carry out or symbolize this oppression. We see only the final pyrotechnics of terror, the shocking moment when the rage erupts into an inchoate fury and the murder of innocents. And willfully uninformed, we do not understand our own complicity. We self-righteously condemn the killers as subhuman savages who deserve more of the violence that created them. This is a recipe for endless terror.
Why these shootings? Because we over-privileged liberals have allowed the economy for our less privileged white brothers and sisters to be destroyed so the only power they feel that they have, the only way they can compete, the only way they think they can win, is with guns. And who can say that they are incorrect?
Realistically, good people, for the thousands of years we've lived in such impossibly large groups, have lived as though it was unreasonable for goodness to prevail . I think we need to stop living so reasonably. I think we need to live as though now evil is no longer acceptable. I don't know what that means for me. I hope I have the wisdom and courage to live accordingly.
***** I think that kindness, charity, are criminal, self-serving, cowardly luxuries from the over-privileged like me behind which we hide from our moral duty of lived solidarity with the global neediest. I am sorry for this lifelong error of mine.