Posted on 06/29/2020 4:19:55 AM PDT by Kaslin
America, as successful as it has been in creating a country where people risk their fortunes and their lives trying to enter, has remained a work in progress. Its past leaders, often imperfect by today’s standards, stretched the fabric of our rich mosaic in every age to help live up to the values we first just dreamed of embracing. We aren’t what we will be, but we can be proud of how far we have come in our journey.
Can we ever get beyond the racial sins of our past and present? I take heart in the Biblical story in Genesis about Joseph, the son of Jacob. Like many who were forced into slavery in America’s early history, Joseph was sold into slavery by his jealous older brothers. In spite of a tragic series of events, Joseph never lost his strong belief in the God of Jacob.
After being sold into slavery in Egypt, he was wrongly accused of rape and placed in prison. Realizing his gift of being able to interpret dreams, Joseph finds favor with Pharaoh. Through his service, this previously insignificant Hebrew slave becomes second in power throughout Egypt.
In the midst of a famine that Joseph predicted, he was given the opportunity for revenge. When his brothers who sold him into slavery came to Egypt to secure grain, instead of punishing them, he helped them, eventually shared his identity, and was reunited with his father. The story takes many twists and turns, but nothing is more striking in light of our current racial tensions than a conversation with his brothers after the death of their father Jacob.
In Genesis Chapter 50, his brothers, now fearing that they may be punished after their father’s death, come to Joseph and begged for his mercy. They offered to be his slaves and shared a message suggested by their father, “’This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.' Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father."
After hearing their plea, Joseph wept and said to his brothers, "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God?” Joseph stayed in Egypt, along with all his father's family….”
Joseph left judgment to God and embraced his brothers who had sold him into slavery. There was no call for reparations, no forced apology, no punishment.
Years ago on a plane from Atlanta to LA, I met Brother Clarence. He was 99 years old and the black son of a former slave. His father had been a young man when the Emancipation Proclamation gave him freedom. Clarence was his last child born near the turn of the century.
Asking what his father said about slavery, Clarence smiled, paused, and said with a certainty I wish more could have seen, “My dad refused to talk about it. He said there’s no point in talking about it because you are free!” What a gift his father gave Brother Clarence as he left Texas and made his way to Los Angeles.
His father, who had actually experienced slavery, wasn’t focused on the past. He cared enough to set his son’s sight on a future with freedom. Clarence was a man of faith, a man of joy with a smile that would fill a room. Even more inspiring, he lived the freedom his father so treasured.
On our money, we read the statement “In God We Trust.” Do we? Maybe we need to. It was not added at our founding but later as a reflection of the cultural importance of faith in God’s providence in America’s story. At the heart of that faith is the power of forgiveness.
Instead of trying to determine fault and reparations for events years in our rearview mirror, is it not more important for us to find a way to keep moving forward? Can we not invest the time wasted in playing this fruitless blame game into working together to make more progress living up to our values of equal rights?
America’s story is still being written. May God feed the better angels of our nature. Like Joseph, may we embrace the power of forgiveness and faith in our future. May we each trust God to empower us to write that future story together in a way that helps further heal our racial divide.
Employers, peer groups, and social media battle fields need to re learn the fine art of forgiveness. They’re going to be forced to.
Soon too many people will have been discarded for puritys sake. There wont be enough left to keep society functioning.
We are nearing that point of saturation.
Discrimination is a learned behavior. Other minorities face significantly less discrimination than blacks. Blacks need an honest confronting of this fact and then ask what they, as a community, can do to change it. Non-blacks have thrown trillions of dollars at the problem with nothing to show for it. Like they say, repeating the same thing over and over and expecting a different result it idiocy. Nope, it's time for the black community to look at the large elephant in the room and start fixing their own house with their own efforts.
A message needing to be given to America. It is time for a renewal in America. One of hope, equality, respect, and tolerance. In order to accomplish this we must throw the old failed establishment of the democrat party. A party that was birthed in slavery and clothed in a history of slave creation.
People of America were promised the Democrat party would change from it oppressive tenancies by FDR with the New Deal but instead they were given a raw deal and the foundational characteristics of the party outlasted those who wished change.
For all people who feel oppressed and put down by society. But can never quite identify who and why. Let me clearly point out the cause of this injury. It is the Democrat party deep with history of oppression of people of color, that is the cause. Do not let their lies, deceit, manipulation and false promises misdirect you. They are a party built for the cause of enrichment of the few and the oppression of others.
It is time for a new future for America and it can only be accomplished with the elimination of the party who was present at the time of this oppression.
God Bless America
Forgiveness is a Judeo-Christian concept. We are a society that is teetering on official post Judeo-Christian.
Judeo-Christianity is incompatible with societal acceptance of birth control which is the central tenet of the left, who eels to take over creating as much as a new constitution or lack thereof, based on birth control- all tgat goes with it- abortion, breakdown of the family, porn, gender bending, normalization of homosexuality, Godlessness
Most people who call themselves conservative are not willing to give up cultural acceptance of birth control so we have ourselves placed above God in creation.
Can’t have both. Either were all equal under God or we’re above God. Not both.
The big lie is that only whites discriminate. For decades, blacks have been indoctrinated by race peddlers, grievance profiteers and the democrat party to blame whites for all their woes.
600,000 Union soldiers died or were wounded in the civil war. Blacks have been the recipients of trillions of dollars from federal, state and local welfare type programs. There is no other place on earth where blacks have greater opportunity and freedom than in the USA.
Relative to their numbers in our society, black on white violent crime far surpasses white on black violent crime. The greatest numbers of violent crime in the black community is black on black.
Bottom line: racism and discrimination occurs in all cultures, colors and communities.
Politicians, legacy news outlets and others who continue to frame this issue only as a "whites discriminate against blacks" distort the truth.
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