As has been attempted in the past, we must understand and address the gap between rich and poor. It's growing at an accelerating rate with the US leading the developing nations in its impact on citizens.
This year, more than half of public school students live in poverty. That's just one of many indicators illustrating the decline of the last half-century.
This gap precipitates troubles; from increased personal debt to increased crime, from limitations on economic mobility to impediments for assimilation, from increased domestic violence to increased international volatility. As today's equivalent to segregation and discrimination, the economic class structure disenfranchises the majority and grants disproportionate influence to the elite. Your place below the gap, like poverty, is not your choice; it's done to you.
If you have an opinion, your representatives in government should hear from you on this one.
Radicals targeted a relatively unknown publisher and gave them world-wide attention. Mega-millions worth in advertising, virtually guaranteeing broad interest and success.
'Charlie' is a troublesome offshoot of western 'freedom of speech'. (OK, you're free to speak your mind, but that doesn't excuse being inflammatory and callously thoughtless, publishing nude depictions of ... let's not go there.)
Make it real. Say instead of a religious satire, they had been publishing insulting and disgusting cartoons belittling your children ... in the local newspaper and in fliers on their school grounds ... and say it had been going on for years, despite your requests that they stop. How deeply might you be offended?
"GENNEVILLIERS, France — Rather than fall quiet as requested during a national minute of silence last week, three boys in Hamid Abdelaali’s high school class in this heavily Muslim suburb of Paris staged an informal protest, speaking loudly through all 60 seconds.
Across France, they were not alone. In one school in Normandy, some Muslim students yelled “God is great!” in Arabic during that same moment. In a Paris middle school, another group of young Muslims politely asked not to respect the minute, arguing to their teacher, “You reap what you sow.”
Abdelaali, a 17-year-old high school senior who did observe the quiet minute, said he did so only because he was outraged by the killings in the name of his religion that were carried out at Charlie Hebdo — the satirical French newspaper attacked by Islamist extremists. But he also said he feels disgusted by a newspaper whose provocative cartoons had used the image of the prophet Muhammad for satire — and which continued to do so in its tragicomic first edition hitting newsstands Wednesday morning. “I know some kids who agreed with the attack,” he said. “I did not, but I also cannot say that I support what Charlie Hebdo is doing.”
Within France’s Muslim community of some 5 million — the largest in Europe — many are viewing the tragedy in starkly different terms from their non-Muslim compatriots. They feel deeply torn by the now-viral slogan “I am Charlie,” arguing that no, they are not Charlie at all.
Many of France’s Muslims — like Abdelaali — abhor the violence that struck the country last week. But they are also revolted by the notion that they should defend the paper. By putting the publication on a pedestal, they insist, the French are once again sidelining the Muslim community, feeding into a general sense of discrimination that, they argue, helped create the conditions for radicalization in the first place."
I am not Charlie. Most are not Charlie. I'm not a radical religionist either, nor are most others.
While we generally agree that terrorist violence isn't going to solve problems, we similarly agree that deliberately provoking another to anger won't either. We have Muslim friends in Egypt and Kenya. Time together and thoughtful conversations over the years have been profoundly illuminating. We share common values, common goals for our children, common hope for our communities and the world. And the last thing any of us would do is deliberately insult the other.
From birth onward, our minds are a battleground. Laying claim to the territory of our thoughts are our family, our schools and churches, our culture, peers, and the media, all fighting for the upper hand in determining who we'll be and how we'll live. Some are wonderfully helpful, many are not.
How do we establish ourselves on the right path?
(Becoming Aware of The Mind – Andrew Gable, 2012.)
Simplistic religion doesn't help much with getting through life. Neither history nor the bible suggests we should expect a suddenly-good-and-wise change in ourselves. In the book, we do find the practical coaching we need, however. There's real heart-change available with help being provided as we need it. Among such practical teachings, we find 2nd Peter, chapter 1.
3His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence,4 by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire.
His offer of help is practical,
not just talk. Take him up on it.
5 For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge,6 and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness,7 and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.8 For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.9 For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins.
10 Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election, for if you practice these qualities you will never fall.
This is not pulpit stuff to hear and forget, it's instruction on how we do our part all day, every day, changing ourselves from harmful to useful. The progress check point to watch for? Increasing! If you possess these qualities in increasing measure ... The alternative is blind, forgetting how it all started.
It won't happen because we heard the sermon, it happens when we do it. It's a lifelong battle.
As a youngster, I was told with a smile ... Things are not as they seem.
An abusive husband will cripple his children. They will be shaped by his behavior, and it will affect their lives, their relationships, and how they raise their own children. Modern psychology and sociology understand how it works, and so do the rest of us. It passes from generation to generation unless it is dealt with and changed. The cycle has to be broken for the persistent harm to come to an end. That's practical truth, not religion. Interestingly, that's a biblically valid truth as well. "... forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
The way out: confession, change, restitution, reconciliation. That's the practical advice from the same book. Interestingly, professional help available (from psychology and sociology) or even Dr. Phil will offer the same path. All practical, all real-life useful.
Religious speakers, it seems, often expound what sounds like spiritual fairy tales from what's offered in the book. It helps to understand that there's practical truth being offered there.
Just a note on the passage: His teaching to the nation of Israel is that if one passes their sin down from generation to generation, training their children in wrong thinking and disobedience, there's a price. Punishment will follow (as in 'you harvest what you've planted'). Those who teach what is against the good they've been given will have their children’s children acquire the practice from their parents and suffer for it. They were instructed about that: “And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children” (Deuteronomy 6:6-7) Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it.” (Proverbs 22:6) There's a wealth of breadth to the subject, of course.
Love is patient and kind, not proud or arrogant. Love will take the time to walk alongside like a brother, and to share the burden, to protect, to trust, to persevere.
Things will change, but love will last. It's bigger than we understand now, but we'll get to see it all. Soon, perhaps.
We're formed and changed by our experiences. More than any other factor, the things we live through are the building blocks of personality, character, values, temperament ... good or bad, easy or hard, and the people we're with, we're formed by it all.
Much of what we experience, especially early in life, is not our choice. Where we're born, the family in which we're raised, the early schools we attend; all are formative, and much of who we are in our early youth is beyond our control.
Then, life choices add to the mix, and we have the opportunity to shape who we are and to be changed at the very foundation. Experiences we choose, opportunities we accept, they each contribute to who we are on the inside.
The video here from Brazil is a striking illustration of how it works.
For an out-of-the-box look at the impact of experience, take a look at these four college guys that went to Guatemala for a couple of months to live on a dollar a day...
(click on the picture for the Youtube video episodes, or you can see the movie on Netflix)
If you've watched the movie (or all the episodes), you'll note that the experience has changed you a bit, changed your perspective, and inspired you to adjust your life, perhaps. It's a good influence, but it will wear off in a couple of days ... unless you reinforce it in yourself by the things you do next.
Note the possibility of becoming different by choice of experience. We're not changed by words, ours or anyone else's. We're changed by doing. That's the way it works.
