In a prophetic letter decades earlier ,
President Thomas Jefferson expressed
the fears of many of his contemporaries over conflicts
of states’ rights, westward settlement, federalism and slavery.
“This momentous question,
like a fire bell in the night,
awakened and filled one with terror,
I considered it at once as the knell of the Union.
It is hushed indeed for the moment.
but this is a reprieve only,
not a final sentence . . .
we have the wolf by the ears
and we can neither hold him
nor safely let him go.”
If we would, as human beings, approach every situation with simple love and compassion for our fellow beings, it would have gone and would go so very far in making a better world. If the slave masters had all agreed to free their slaves before that war, or at the very least after the war, educated and tried to help them by organizing everyone to now work together with FAIR sharecropping offers and looking at the freed slave as a human being, teaching him to read and offering him the same education as his own children received - with love instead of condescending behavior in many instances - perhaps things might be different. I think we need to heed the same lesson in our zeal against the Latino immigrants while demanding that our porous borders be sealed and our immigration laws be enforced as much as possible.
If Christian people don’t minister to the Latino population as well as the black population, we can be sure the Muslims will. Sometimes the truth may be the best ministry of them all.