Modern social media never ceases to amaze the old guy.
While unsuccessfully searching for the crank on my cell phone or maybe the front end of my Studebaker, I’ve miraculously discovered that I can receive these reminders of Facebook posts by folks I know. You just click on them and they’ll take you to the posts or replies made.
Who’d have thunk it! It’s sort of like taking a turn on a path through the woods and finding yourself emerging from the weeds and suddenly off the bank into a muddy, murky swimming hole you never knew was there.
We’ve been talking for awhile now about how essential it is for us as citizens to engage as a working, functioning polity to be able to have any hope of addressing the major problems we all share as a nation and a world.
In this case my sudden sputtering immersion brought to my attention a humongous obstacle to that coming together purposefully. You kind of have to be living on the same planet to do so.
The “post” replies and “thread” I came on were what purported to be an affronted “expose” of just how many Muslims there are in public office — gasp — everywhere around “our” country.
The overall sentiment seemed to be, “How the heck could that have happened?”. Talk about your deep water, or deep something. The thought occurred to the old guy that it just might be because there are 4 million Muslims, 13 million atheists, 15.5 million agnostics, 7.5 million Jews, 3.5 million Hindus and 210 million folks who claim to be Christian, i.e., to believe in the worth and value of all fellow human beings in “our” country.
Or maybe just a total of 350 million folks who claim to be citizens of a democratic republic whose constitution stipulates that all men are created equal and that there is not nor can there be any state sanctioned religion.
Sort of makes sense, doesn’t it, if you think about it?
But that’s probably the point. Too many of us aren’t. And if we aren’t, we’re subject to having a big honking load of malarkey thrown at us, for some purpose. Hmm ... wonder what it’d be.
As my beautiful wife’s mother in law used to put it, bless her pea-picking heart, “I’ve been a studyin.” Well, the old codger can’t claim to be that venerable force of nature, but it seems to me that Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus; all of us might have got the word from the man upstairs, pretty much the same word.
To paraphrase it, “You’re my children, this is my creation. Love one another. Love my creation. Care for it and each other.” End of story.
But, hey, we’re human. We’re kind of like good old MIL. We can’t leave well enough alone. We mishear, misunderstand, (intentionally or otherwise), distrust, covet, fear and then hate until we can’t tell our (blank) from a hole in the ground.
Some of us listened and learned when we got that actual message from “the man”, but too many of us, as my Grandma would say, are just a little too big for our britches, i.e.; conniving, reinterpreting in a self-serving manner, misreading and, yep, just not listening to His real message.
Throughout history, those who say we’re Muslims and Christians, Jews and Hindus and probably even Buddhists have spun and defiled His teachings to do immeasurable harm to our fellow human beings. It ain’t pretty and it ain’t what He teaches, regardless of denomination.
If you know me, you know the old codger’s about the strongest advocate there is for Catholic and Christian faith and its value to us as human beings. Maybe because I know He not only doesn’t embrace or countenance our so human, self-destructive frailties, but the very core of His teachings to us His children, has not only warned against it, but told us it will take our souls.
