Monthly Archives: August 2020

Fake News, August 31, 2020

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

Well, it feels like we’re snowed in one more day in Central Texas. The coronavirus seems to make it feel like that, anyway. People are staying indoors a lot more than they used to. But folks are learning to get around a little better with social distancing. Schools opened in many areas with varying degrees of success – some with masks, some without, some online, and some hybrid in-person and online. These are strange times, indeed.

At least in San Antonio, our hospital census continues to drop from COVID-19 cases. The danger stays with us, and we can expect another spike with school starting, but we hope trends continue with kids less susceptible to the disease. Then with good hygiene practices, we hope families can keep it from spreading from the schools to their homes. We will soon see.

Of course, fall and winter are almost here, with the expectation of a second wave of the virus. Scientists talk about a vaccine, but getting one in 12 to 18 months when they usually take 11 to 14 years to pass FDA standards makes one a little leery of what might come out of the laboratories. How effective will they be, and what side effects will they have that are unknown after just a few months of testing?

The pandemic in this country seems like the good news right now. The thing that fills the headlines everyday concerns the politics of the riots and upcoming elections. What’s suddenly different about the post office that delivery might be delayed by weeks? Why do they need to $25 billion when they asked for $2.5 billion, and their profits and cash flow have been positive for the last five years? But since the newscasts tell us they can’t deliver the mail, it must be true, despite their balance sheet figures and their ability to fill my box with enough junk mail to fill my 70-gallon recycle bin every week.

I mentioned last week, we need to stop listening to the news and social media and do our homework. This is one of those areas. Find the numbers and the statistics about the Postal Service testimonies that go to the Government Accounting Office, not the questions that make it to C-SPAN, and you’ll see an interesting picture. It’s also interesting to read the Congressional Budget. That’s the legislative branch that spends our money. Talk about fascinating reading! It is unbelievable where taxes go every year.

Enough about that. Time to turn toward the words that hit me from the lectionary this week. Paul wrote to Christians in Rome to talk about how they should act living in that pagan city. The church felt heavy persecution. The Roman government wanted to destroy mystic religions, defined as those worshipers did not bow to idols crafted for their gods. Any invisible god was no god to them. Christians and Jews were particularly singled out as atheists because they believed in a single god. How could one God control the world? It required pleasing a pantheon of gods to make sure things progressed correctly.

Paul had this to say in Romans chapter 12:

⁹Love must be real. Hate what is evil, stick fast to what is good. ¹⁰Be truly affectionate in showing love for one another; compete with each other in giving mutual respect. ¹¹Don’t get tired of working hard. Be on fire with the spirit. Work as slaves for the Lord. ¹²Celebrate your hope; be patient in suffering; give constant energy to prayer; ¹³contribute to the needs of God’s people; make sure you are hospitable to strangers.

¹⁴Bless those who persecute you; bless them, don’t curse them. ¹⁵Celebrate with those who are celebrating, mourn with the mourners. ¹⁶Come to the same mind with one another. Don’t give yourselves airs, but associate with the humble. Don’t get too clever for yourselves.

¹⁷Never repay anyone evil for evil; think through what will seem good to everyone who is watching. ¹⁸If it’s possible, as far as you can, live at peace with all people. ¹⁹Don’t take revenge, my dear people, but allow God’s anger room to work. The Bible says, after all, ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.’ ²⁰No: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him a drink. If you do this, you will pile up burning coals on his head.’ ²¹Don’t let evil conquer you. Rather, conquer evil with good. (Romans 12:9-21 NTE)

The emperor didn’t know what to do with that. How do you persecute people who are feeding the poor, the widows, and orphans? How do you get the populace to turn against individuals who refuse to fight back when attacked? How do you get a Roman soldier to think it okay to run a spear through a mother who gives him a blessing as he does so?

Love wins. Unfortunately, what we see in social media and on the streets of our cities today is not love. We see a lot of hate. The riots, violence, destruction, disregard for human life in our major cities, says we don’t care about each other. And too often I see some of those actions coming from people who call themselves Christians. I am not God, but I expect many of those will be among that crowd. Jesus turns away and says, “I never knew you.”

And they will say, “But didn’t we bomb abortion clinics in your name? Didn’t we face the mob in your name? Didn’t we defend our rights in your name? Didn’t we stand up for our laws in your name? Didn’t we march in the streets for your name? Didn’t we scream at midnight as the voice for the voiceless in your name? Didn’t we try to right injustice in your name? Didn’t we try to rid the world of socialism in your name? Didn’t we try to swing the vote right or left in your name? Didn’t we…?”

And he will retort, “Sorry, I never knew you. You might have used my name, but my name means grace, mercy, love, forgiveness, just as I showed you. You never showed those characteristics in your zeal for what was right in your own eyes. Now I stand in judgment. I never knew you. Turn aside.”

It doesn’t matter which side of the issue you support. Going about solving it in unchristian ways still results in unchristian behavior and brings consequences. Paul tells us to love. Replace evil with good. In fact, he says to go further than that. He says if your enemy is hungry, feed him. If he is thirsty, give him something to drink. Let God be your avenger. He will do a much better job in the end, anyway. His justice is perfect. Ours is not.

So, here is your homework. It might be really boring, but it is really important. You will hear about some crisis happening in the government today or tomorrow that is about to make some department collapse. Don’t listen to any news reporter or pundit talk about it. Instead, go to the official reports of that department, the one they must give to Congress and the Budget Office. Not their talking notes, but their report that goes into the record. Take the time to read it. See what about their numbers say. You’ll probably find that both sides take pieces out of the report to fit their agenda. They will use one chart or one graph to make their point, whether representative of the whole report or not.

Fake news? Yep. Both sides of the fence. That’s why this year, more than any before, we have to do our homework for every candidate. Know who they are and what they stand for. Find the one who demonstrates love for their enemies, who returns good for evil. That’s the person you want. But don’t trust the media’s take on who that person is. Find out for yourself. Do your homework. And while you’re at it, pour a little good on your neighborhood.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

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Be Transformed, August 23, 2020

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

The lectionary this week included these verses from Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.

So, my dear family, this is my appeal to you by the mercies of God: offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God. Worship like this brings your mind into line with God’s. 2 What’s more, don’t let yourselves be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age. Instead, be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you can work out what God’s will is, what is good, acceptable and complete. (Romans 12:1-2 NTE)

Paul has painstakingly taken his readers through arguments explaining the fallacy of the leaning on the law and how it can never help us find right standing with God. It can only point out our flaws. It shows us our wrongs; worse than that, it leads us into temptation by enticing us into doing things we would not have known before.

Paul takes us through a series of steps to find that place of peace, salvation, redemption from the creator. Often called the Roman Road, it begins with acknowledging our sins, confessing them, and realizing we cannot absolve them ourselves. Then asking forgiveness from God, the one who can make us whole, and acknowledging him alone as God and Lord of our life.

When we confess him as Lord, that means he rules our life. He is in charge. We don’t use those terms much in our day and age because it brings back memories of the slave trades, masters, and slaves – dark days we want to forget in our history. But the relationship Paul talks about between mere mortals, us, and God fits. He is God; we are not. He deserves and demands our undivided devotion and attention.

We miss that point in trying to cover up the relationship, particularly with the current crises in our land today. With the turmoil broiling across the country, assuming all whites are guilty of racism and all blacks are protesters and rioters, we refuse to talk about slavery in spiritual terms. We’ve let the world hijack so many words we seldom know what generations talk about anymore. Here are just a few GenZers have taken over – extra, snatched, wig, bet, fire, cap, shade, salty, slay, shook, tea. I’ll let you figure out the new meaning, or just ask your teenager.

What happens, though, is we talk around each other instead of talking to each other. We fail to understand what each side means when we hear words spoken because what we hear is not what is said by the other person. No communication happens because we speak different languages even though the words sound like English. That’s part of our problem with generational gaps. We try to talk to each other but don’t hear each other’s side.

How do we get back to some common ground, so we fix the divide tearing us apart?

First, go back to Romans 12. Stop letting the world determine how you live your life and how you think. The media too often shapes what we believe, and various outlets are blatantly biased. And we tend to choose our favored side instead of listening to all the facts and deciding for ourselves. We instead let someone else think for us and blindly follow the rhetoric fed to us rather than spend time researching facts.

So, don’t be shaped by the world, but let God’s spirit in you transform your mind. Allow him to change you. How do you do that? Spend time in His word. Don’t pick favorite verses or the out of context verses each side uses to prove a point but absorb large sections of God’s word each day to understand what he wants to get across to you. Did you know that just spending fifteen minutes a day reading the Bible, you would read it through in a year?

That’s about the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee, so during that next coffee break, open God’s word, and just start reading. Ask him to help you learn from it and how he wants you to apply it to your life today. You will be amazed at what he brings to mind as you go about your day if you really mean those words. You will begin to realize the transformation in your thinking and understand what Paul talks about in knowing God’s will. You’ll see evidence of the change in your life as you see others in a different light. You’ll see with eyes of compassion; you’ll desire others know the truth of God’s word the way you begin to discover it from your time with him. You’ll long to know more of him each day.

Next, make it a point to listen to those around you. But really listen. Don’t just hear words spoken, because we know words have taken on new meanings over time. We can hear words and not know the intended meaning of the speaker because of the changes. Take time to listen and ask questions to make sure you understand.

I’ve used this illustration before that I shared with officers when they joined my units in the Army. What does it mean to ‘secure the building?’ It depends on your Service. In the Marines, it means storm the building until nothing is left standing. In the Army, it means to surround it with concertina wire, guard posts, and soldiers, so nothing comes near it. In the Navy, it means to find the owner and purchase it. In the Air Force, it means to turn out the lights and lock the doors.

It’s a humorous illustration, but it points to the fact that misunderstanding a single word in communication between two people can have disastrous results. If, as an Army officer, I gave that command to a Marine without further explanation, I could suddenly find a pile of rubble instead of a heavily guarded building for a headquarters. The same words, but a significant difference in the outcome.

The same happens in our communications today when we fail to stop and listen, ask questions when there might be some confusion in our understanding. Ask the question, what do I have to believe about that person to think he or she would say or do what I think they said or did?

Stop and think about that just for a minute, we hear the leftist decry Presidents Trump and Bush constantly. We also hear the right blast Presidents Obama and Clinton the same way. But why would anyone want to become president other than to help the country? Since President Regan, every president always wears a bulletproof vest outside the White House. Secret Service surrounds them constantly, so they have no privacy – ever. The press hounds them as much or more than any Hollywood celebrity. Their opponents take apart every speech and look for any slight to use against them. Worse, statements are edited and twisted to make even the point opponents would agree on turn against them.

They give up lucrative positions to become prisoners to impossible schedules. Yes, we see them on vacations and golf courses, but what we don’t hear during those “vacations” is the rest of their calendar. The round of golf is sandwiched between hours of briefings, meetings with governors, senators, and other leaders in the area, mounds of paperwork that came with them. We never hear about the fourteen- and sixteen-hour routine they face every day.

Who would want to be president? There are reasons why after eight years in office, a past president looks twenty years older than when they took the oath. The stress and pace of leading the nation take a toll only someone dedicated to making the country better would want. Each party looks at different ways to do that, but the man in the office has the same ideal, make America a better place for the next generation. So, before blasting the person, stop and think. What do I have to believe about him to think he would say or do what is reported. You’ll probably figure out reports are half-truths at best, and if you read transcripts or full reports instead of the snippets from any mainline media, fake news might be a pretty good description of what happens today on both sides.

The Democratic National Convention just ended. Political campaigns for the November elections will start in full force now. I suggest whenever a campaign ad comes on, you mute your radio or television or whatever you might be listening to at the time. Whenever the news talks about something political, I recommend you mute whatever you’re hearing. Whenever someone on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter start a political rant, don’t read it, just skip it or block it.

“… don’t let yourselves be squeezed into the shape dictated by the present age.”

Instead, do some homework. I know, it sounds like school. But that’s okay. Our country’s future is at stake. When you hear about a speech, find the whole speech, and read it, don’t listen to someone’s abstract. When you hear about legislation, go find out what it says and how your candidate thought about it. If they are in office, why they voted the way they did. Did they vote no because of amendments tacked on to the original bill? We often don’t hear about that, but often, those amendments cause the problems in whether bills pass or not.

Find out what candidates believe, find out what they say they will do, not what they think about their opponent. Then think hard about whether what they say they will do is realistic. A candidate can promise a lot, but everything costs money, and who pays for it? When they say a corporation will, that sounds good, but corporations aren’t people, they are businesses that make money by selling things to us. We pay their taxes by purchasing their goods. When their taxes go up, their prices go up. We pay their taxes. Free health care sounds good, but someone pays for it? Who? How will promises be kept? Find out about the fine print as you think about the candidates you choose.

You have time to consider. Do your research. Don’t be stuffed in a box. Don’t just follow the crowd. Don’t pull a party lever. Know the reasons you choose the person and the character behind the person. Mostly, spend time with God every day. Let him help you discern your walk in every part of life, even as a good citizen.

Unity is Good and Pleasant, August 17, 2020

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

The verses from Psalms in this week’s lectionary bring back some childhood memories for me. I thought they depicted a pretty disgusting scene. Here’s what the psalmist wrote in the 133^rd Psalm:

How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!

It is like the precious oil on the head, running down upon the beard, on the beard of Aaron, running down over the collar of his robes.

It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the LORD ordained his blessing, life forevermore. (Psalms 133:1-3 NIV)

I don’t know about you, but I always thought pouring oil on your head sounded a little weird. But both the Old and New Testament use the act as something extraordinary. It’s the mark of kingship, the beginning of a priest’s official duty, the recognition of God’s anointing on a prophet. The pouring of oil indicated something special about a person.

You and I would probably run to the shower to try to get all that greasy stuff off us. Or at least that’s what I thought until I started traveling around the world thanks to the Army. My military duties took me to a few countries where people still use oil as a unique mark of distinction. There you saw only the rich and powerful, or religious leaders, or someone paid special tribute covered with oil infused with fragrant spices.

Reading through scripture, you find the oils used for anointing also had fragrant spices mixed with them. And in those countries, and in biblical times, I discovered why pouring oil on someone held such significance. No one used deodorant. Spices were expensive. People’s body odor can get pretty rank when soap and water are scarce; there’s no deodorant, and nothing to cover the smell.

So, the rich, those in power, special occasions, like weddings, embalming the dead, anointing kings, prophets, and priests with fragrant oils, made them smell good for at least as long as the oil stuck around. It might be greasy and make us turn our nose up at the practice here, but when you’ve visited a country with plenty of body odor, you relish the anointing oil practice and wish more would participate in it.

Well, I changed my mind about the oil pouring down a person’s hair and beard as an adult as I read these and other verses like them in the Psalms. But I haven’t changed my mind about that first verse. “How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!”

Too often, relatives split apart over the most insignificant things. Infighting among siblings happens over something someone says. Or at the death of a parent fights break out over the distribution of an inheritance. But what do those things matter in the larger scheme of life? Material things disappear. The person who left the stuff behind couldn’t take it with them, and neither will anyone fighting over it. It is just stuff, after all. Only relationships last.

Little things get blown out of proportion. We refuse to apologize to each other. Years go by, and we don’t even remember what the original issue was, but we’re too proud to make a move to restore the relationship, so the divide continues—what a sad state of affairs.

I don’t think the psalmist talks about just our immediate family, though. We tend to narrow his meaning to include only those within our that small group, or maybe to our extended family of aunt and uncles and cousins. I think, though, that David extends his thoughts well beyond even that group when he talks of unity among kindred.

David thought of kindred as encompassing at least the nation of Israel, the twelve tribes that descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I believe David even thought further than that, though. David longed for peace for his nation and his sons, who would follow him on the throne. He wanted unity among all those living not just in the land he ruled, but with all those lands around him.

What a great lesson we could learn by listening to the voice of the psalmist. We experience nothing but violence around the world between tribes and nations. Now we see it in our country. Nightly, a group of radicals damage buildings and destroy businesses men and women spent lifetimes developing. City governments seem either helpless or unwilling to stop the violence in some areas.

Since the 1970s, we have seen the country’s party rhetoric divide us further and further apart. The left and right get more egregious and today refuse even to discuss what the nation needs. We no longer hear debates, only deafening screams from one side or the other followed by violent outrage ending in injury and death to innocent people.

I’m not sure what happened to us in the last 40 years. Well, yes, I do. Some will argue it’s because we took prayer out of schools. But that isn’t the problem. Some will say it’s because we compromised and started using “Holiday Season” to describe Christmas. But that isn’t the problem, either. Some will argue the problem started with some of the Supreme Court decisions on abortion and other laws Christians oppose. But even those laws are not the problem that pushed us where we are today.

I would argue it isn’t even racism or systemic racism or the Jim Crow Laws or the segregation or the Civil Rights movements or any of the things being said by either side in the protest groups today, that caused the problems we face. We are where we are today because we lost prayer in the home. We lost our Christian view. We no longer believe Jesus saves and provides the best answers to life. He says, give all you can to help others; we say, get all you can to help yourself.

How do we go about finding that unity David finds so precious? First, we need to confess our part in the relationship problem. We live in a broken world. Whether we want to believe it or not, each of us holds some responsibility for the brokenness we see around us. All of us, whatever our color or political persuasion hold prejudices we don’t even recognize in ourselves. But they exist, nonetheless. So, first, we need to let God shine his light in our hearts and confess our part of the relationship problems to him.

Second, we need to ask his forgiveness for our part in the struggle and accept that forgiveness. Will we change our old habits and thought patterns overnight? Maybe, maybe not, but with confession, true repentance, and God’s help, we can begin to change them. We can become less extreme in our views and able to see why the other side thinks the way they do. Then we can perhaps be more understanding. We don’t have to agree, but we can be more understanding. And that begins to heal broken relationships.

Third, we need to learn to listen. Both sides of an argument must stop the screaming, cool down, and determine to listen to each other to gain that understanding and come to a mutual agreement, even if it is to disagree. At least after hearing each other, both sides will know why each takes the position they make, and most often, through collegial discussion, some solutions will rise that will resolve the primary issues at hand.

While violence, screaming, refusal to dialog, uncompromising demands on either side exist, dialog and resolution cannot happen. And quite frankly, until we bring God back into our homes, little hope exists for healing in our nation or our world. Our country is not a Christian nation; neither was the Roman world in which Jesus died and commanded his disciples to spread his message of peace and hope.

Perhaps as we watch the events of the past couple of months unfold around us, it’s time to pick up the mantle Jesus gave his followers those many years ago. Perhaps it’s time we spread the message of peace and hope to those who need it most. It made a difference in the pagan Roman world 2,000 years ago. Perhaps it will make a difference today, too.

Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV): Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™. Used by permission of Zondervan

What Did We Do? August 3, 2020

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Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

Seven months of this year are behind us. Seven months of events hard to believe could happen as the year began with the dropping of that crystal ball atop the tower in Times Square on New Year’s Day. We’ve experienced a pandemic with more than 16 million cases of COVID-19 resulting in more than 650,000 deaths worldwide, so far. It’s not slowing down. Scientists tell us we haven’t started the second wave of the virus yet. That still faces us this winter and spring. We’ve had locust plagues across Africa that destroyed crops.

Racial tension erupted in our country causing billions in damages and dozens of deaths and hundreds of injuries in our major cities. The tensions spread across the western world into Britain, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Australia. New threats of violence rise from Russia as they encroach on the Polish borders and launch satellite killing technology into space. China and North Korea flex their muscles and threaten the Pacific rim, posing their ideologies against their neighboring countries’.

Now we have more news about the bubonic plague coming out of China and a new mutation of the H1N1 flu that proved so devastating to the world in the 1960s. So, we wonder what’s next as we brace for the next five month and maybe look forward to this year ending sooner rather than later. Maybe next year will hold a little more promise than this one. But then again…

As I’ve mentioned before, some of the things we faced this year we could do little about. Pandemics and plagues wash through the world no matter what we try to do to stop them. A new virus or bacteria or mutated something spreads from one person to another and suddenly it is out of control. Look back through recorded history and you will find evidence of plagues and pandemics that touched humanity in frightening numbers. This one, in fact, has been relatively mild in terms of the devastation compared to many. We just have much better communication and our news outlets publish only the worst stories they can find instead of the best. Bad news sells much better than good news.

But some of the things we faced this year we caused. And the more I read and try to understand, the more I see the root causes of some of the issue we face within our nation and our world. I don’t agree with the riots and destruction of property taking place in our cities, but we need to stop and listen to the problems. Is there systemic racism in our country? Begin to read. Search out why things are like they are. Discover the disparities among the cultures. Determine why the divide exists between whites and people of color.

As I have studied more over the last couple of months and tried to listen to the stories of those not like me, I must admit, I wanted to be defensive and give pat answers to the disparities. Go to school. Get a job. Work hard. Anyone can get ahead in America. What I’m finding is that has not been and still is not true in any fair sense. And it is the policies those in authority put in place to distinguish between races. Before anyone thinks it is one political side or another, both sides of the aisle are equally guilty. Study the legislation of both parties and you’ll find laws, policies, and principally budget discrepancies that put money into the hands of whites at the decrement of not just blacks, but all people of color.

For blacks, however, it began immediately after the Civil War when vagrancy became a crime, but the law was imposed primarily on black males without jobs. Then jailed black men were leased out to plantation owners. So, freed slaves found themselves working for almost nothing on the same plantations on which they had been slaves, but now the owners had no vested interest in caring for them because they were leased labor instead of property. For many, conditions worsened instead of improved as freedmen.

Redlining, a practice the Federal Housing Authority put in place to determine areas in cities at high risk for federally insured loans under the FHA and GI Bills identified primarily urban, black neighborhoods in those redlined areas. So, blacks could not take advantage of FHA loans or VA loans when those programs began in the mid-twentieth century. It wasn’t until 1980, the Realtor licensing codes allowed realtors to actively comingle races within neighborhoods without risk of losing their license. We created the divisions with our policies.

I’ve even thought about our stories lately as I’ve asked you to sit with someone not like you and asked you to really listen. I’ve mentioned before at my grandmother’s funeral, ninety-six of her family members gathered to honor her. I think at the time, twenty-three of them engaged in full-time ministry. The rest participated regularly in church, not just attending, but teaching, singing in choirs, sitting on boards, and so forth. My family descends from three brothers who came to the shores of this country in the 18^th century on a mission to spread the gospel in this new world.

Now listen to the story of someone my son’s age, but not like me. He has been arrested twice. Once for possession of a marijuana joint, and once for resisting arrest when he refused to lay face down in the mud. He his mom about his father asked about his father when he was younger; he’s in jail for possession of drugs. Second offense laws under the Clinton administration allowed for lifetime sentencing. He was one of those hit with that inexplicable punishment. His grandfather was also an ex-con, but he was killed coming out of a bar he cleaned to make extra money – a robbery gone bad. His widow thinks he was on his way home with his weekly pay of less than $40 in his pocket.

Then his story gets remarkable worse. His great-grandfather worked as a sharecropper. His share of the crop was 30%, the owner took 70%. The family barely survived in the rundown shack with no electricity or running water. His great-great-grandfather was a freed slave under Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation but couldn’t get a job. The vagrancy laws at time said any black man without a job went to jail. The irony is, the plantation owner who owned him as a young slave took pretty good care of him as his property. As leased labor from the jail, that same plantation owner didn’t have much concern for the welfare of his hired “darkies,” he sometimes called them. His family history goes no further. Families split on the auction block or when sold between plantations. Property goes to the highest bidder when slaves aren’t people.

I can trace my family history back into at least the middle ages with some proud history and a few dishonorable characters in the mix as well. He can trace his family only to the Civil War and no further. His race wasn’t not considered human, so it was okay to tear families apart, sell working aged boys and girls (six and seven) to others so your bill for upkeep wasn’t so high. Most of us can begin to imagine a history like that. We can’t imagine living in an area marked as dangerous and unfit for home loans or even loans for home improvement because someone decided the color of our skin automatically made us a financial risk.

My baby boomer generation took advantage of policies that brought great economic boosts to almost every city across the country through federally insured loans, cheap education through the GI Bill, affordable housing in the suburbs, and more. But all those policies also had a dark side most of us never knew existed or most of us would have shouted about the injustice. As an example, in Georgia after WWII, 3200 soldiers received GI Bill funding to advance their education – 2 were black. Of the 67,000 total students receiving funding in the first years of the GI Bill, less than 100 were black. More than 1 million black soldiers served in WWII. The disparity in numbers are not because they didn’t want to take advantage of the funds, it was the discrimination in colleges and universities that kept people of color out.

Do we have a problem in our country with systemic racism? We absolutely do. I have black friends. That’s not what this is about. I invite my black brothers and sisters to anything I go to or anything I enjoy. That’s not what this is about. I’ve worked with and for blacks with no problem. That’s not what this is about. It’s not even about police brutality or George Floyd. We have a problem in our country about recognizing the rights of all people.

We did not condemn the Italians to the same fate as immigrants to this country. Nor did we condemn Greeks or Jews or Hispanics or Syrians or Swedish or any other immigrants except those with ebony pigmented skin. Those we segmented as lower-class, less privileged, high risk. We did it starting 400 years ago.

I’m beginning to understand why the Black Lives Matter movement began and the just cause of its original founders. I’m learning about the inequities my race placed upon other people of color in this country, especially blacks, though policies and laws I never realized until I took the time to stop and study their real affects. I’m beginning to realize why other races talk about white privilege and white supremacy because of advantages my race created for ourselves at the expense of others.

I still condemn the riots and violence. That is not the way to bring a solution to the problems we face. I condemn the Marxist and communist groups hiding behind the Black Lives Matter movement trying to overthrow our government. This is still the best country in which to live and to be able to resolve problems like this one. But it is huge. Not insurmountable, but it will take all of us relooking at our history and understanding what we did to pe ople not like me. We will need to come to the place Paul came when he said:

Now let me speak the truth as plainly as I know it in the Anointed One. I am not lying when I say that my conscience and the Holy Spirit are witnesses to my state of constant grief. It may sound extreme; but I wish that I were lost, cursed, and totally separated from the Anointed—if that would change the eternal destination of my brothers and sisters, my flesh and countrymen. (Romans 9:1-3 The VOICE)

When we begin to feel compassion for each other and understand the role we all play in the life of this country, good and bad, we can begin to find solutions to our problems. As a nation, we are truly blessed. It’s time we find ways to resolve the internal shortcomings we created while becoming the economic powerhouse of the world. We cannot continue to call ourselves an economic answer for the world if we allow our policies to slight a large segment of our own.

I don’t know the answers, but I know if we stop the violence, sit down and debate alternatives, we can find solutions. Americans are known for their ingenuity and inventiveness. Why don’t we put those characteristics to work and solve this great problem before we tear ourselves apart.