I admire and support Barack Obama. I am looking forward to seeing him in the Oval Office after he is sworn in next January 20.
I also admire and support Obama’s long-time pastor, the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright. I have heard Dr. Wright speak a couple of times — not at his church on the South side of Chicago, but as a guest speaker at my seminary, Garrett-Evangelical in Evanston — and I have always been impressed and inspired by his words. So it surprises me that Dr. Wright has come under fire lately for statements he has made in some of his sermons.
One of Wright’s statements that has brought criticism came from a sermon he gave shortly after 9-11:
We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas has now brought right back into our own front yards. America’s chickens are coming home to roost.
Wright was saying that what goes around comes around. Wright was saying that the United States has made mistakes and as a result has made enemies. Is that really so offensive? Of course not. But, unfortunately, there are folks in this country who believe one should never criticize the U.S.A. — even if the current administration is, in fact, wrong.
Another of Wright’s statements that has put people in turmoil is the following:
The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing ‘God Bless America.’ No, no, no! Not God bless America. God damn America. That’s in the Bible for killing innocent people. God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.
Yes, this is harsh language. But what really offends people here? Would people be so upset if Wright had said, “God damn terrorists?” or “God damn ax murderers?” No. People are upset because they cannot conceive that someone would speak negatively of the U.S.A. But why? Do people really believe the U.S.A. is perfect? That this country has made no mistakes? That it has never done anything self-serving? That the United States of America has never sinned?
Does patriotism mean never criticizing your country, even when your country has wronged others? Or does patriotism mean loving your country enough to speak out when it is wrong?
Our country has done a lot of stupid, bad, and terrible things (e.g. exterminating Native Americans, enslaving Africans, interring Japanese Americans, dropping Atomic bombs on innocent Japanese civilians, the Vietnam War and, most recently, the War in Iraq, just to name a few). Those of us who acknowledge these mistakes should not be persecuted or accused of being unpatriotic.
Actually, Wright’s words sound kind of familiar when he said, “We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians…and now we are indignant because the stuff we have done overseas has now brought right back into our own front yards.” Jesus said something very similar in Matthew 26: “All who live by the sword will die by the sword.”
And so what if Wright said “God damn America”? Has anybody ever picked up a Bible and read what the prophets said about Israel? The prophets were always at odds with the Kings of Israel because the Kings were always screwing up the nation by oppressing the poor and making the people worship false gods. And the people were always going along with it. So the prophets had a lot of harsh words for their nation. For example, here are some of the words from the first chapter of the prophet Isaiah:
Ah, sinful nation, people laden with iniquity, offspring who do evil, children who deal corruptly, who have forsaken the Lord.... How the faithful city has become a whore! She that was full of justice, righteousness lodged in her — but now murderers!
The job of the prophets was to speak truth to power and their language was harsh. Sometimes there just isn’t a pretty way to say, “You’ve really screwed things up.” So is it really so terrible for Rev. Jeremiah Wright to use this kind of harsh, prophetic language? I think not.
I have heard a lot of statements that are offensive in my time, but Wright’s are not among them. Dr. Wright’s thoughts after 9-11 are certainly much more palatable than those of Jerry Falwell who said:
The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the Pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’
Or how about James Dobson, who said:
Yes I believe that the attacks are God’s punishment because we are in a moral decay in this country, with abortion, forcing children to be taught about homosexuality, removing God from the schools, sexual immorality on television, and in our government. And this is God’s way of punishing the wicked.
Statements like this are just wrong. Statements like this condemn the innocent by trying to shift the blame onto a scapegoat (such as Hitler did with the Jews). But Jeremiah Wright has the right idea. Instead of blaming scapegoats (as Dobson and Falwell did), Wright is saying that the U.S. itself is partially to blame for its problems because of its unjust policies in the Middle East and its general arrogance, indifference to, and bullying of other countries and people around the world. In addition, The U.S. is surely to blame for its own poverty and its homelessness and the racial inequity in its prisons.
We are to blame. Not gays and lesbians. Not pro-choice folks. Not illegal immigrants. Not Muslims. Not feminists. We, as a country, are responsible for our own actions.
So God damn us when we do not stand up for what is right. God damn us for not ending an unjust war. God damn us if we do not elect leaders who will make right decisions.
And God bless Jeremiah Wright for being a prophetic voice and reminding us of these things.
Comments (15)
Thursday, March 20, 2008 10:19 AM
"We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye."
Yeah, the difference is that we bombed those place to end a war, and New York was attacked to start a war. Oh, but that's the same thing. We don't look at intent, because we're too busy condemning our own country for trying to keep the peace. Typical of Democrats.
Jeremiah Wright is an idiot who needs to crawl back into the hole he came out of.
Thursday, March 20, 2008 2:43 PM
Andrew,
You said, "New York was attacked to start a War." Perhaps you would like to retract that grossly misinformed statement?
We have been at war with Iraq (or what's left of it) now for five years. Iraq did not attack us on 9-11-01. I know this must be really difficult for conservatives to get through their thick, racist heads, but there are all kinds of different countries and entities made up of Muslim people. Yes, we were attacked by a small group of fanatical terrorists who happened to be Muslims. Using your "logic," therefore, we have the right to attack any country with Muslim citizens.
According to this thinking, then, we could have just attacked China when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. After all, they're all Asians. What difference does it make which ones we kill?
I can't believe I even have to point these things out to people.
As for "the bomb" issue, there were at least a hundred different things we could have done to end World War II instead of instantly incinerating millions of people. All we proved was that the U.S. is just as capable of monstrous acts as any other country. And here we are over sixty years later still just as monstrous.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008 3:30 PM
I agree with most of what you said. America has committed a number of sins and continues to commit a number of sins and rightly deserves all of God's wrath. I just find it interesting that you only agree with God's judgment when it is for your pet sins. For someone to call on God's judgment for our treatment of slaves is fine, but calling for God's judgment for the genocide of a generation of children, well that's just tryig to "shift the blame to a scapegoat." Could it be that God judges us for both our violence to our enemies and our violence to our children? Could it be that we are damned for how we treat the poor and for how we treat our sexuality?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 9:09 AM
Sam said: "Could it be that God judges us for both our violence to our enemies and our violence to our children? Could it be that we are damned for how we treat the poor and for how we treat our sexuality?"
Absolutely. When we treat our sexuality as something by which to condemn others (e.g. the way homophobes condemn gays and lesbians) then certainly, God responds with a resounding NO!"
As for what you call the "genocide of a generation of children," I can only say that the amorphous glob of cells in a woman's body that sometimes must be aborted can hardly be called a child any more than a brick can be called a house. And no man has any right to judge and condemn a woman for what she has determined is necessary for her and her body.
Why not spend our energy and resources on the real, living children? The minority children who live in poverty in our society? Or the Native American children who actually were victims of genocide?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 10:35 AM
Why not do both: protect the unborn from destruction and protect the born from neglect?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 4:31 PM
Because the welfare of living people is more important than the welfare of hypothetical people.
One of Jesus' disciples once said, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead."
The dead no longer exist. And the "unborn" may or may not exist at some point in the future. So let's not waste precious time and resources on the non-existent. We need to focus on helping real, live, flesh-and-blood human beings.
Let's take care of the living first. After we've accomplished that, then we can start talking about helping imaginary people.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 10:36 PM
There is nothing hypothetical about a fetus. This is simple biological fact. A human fetus will develop into a human child. A human child will develop into a human adolescent. And a human adolescent will develop into a human . can interrupt this process at any point, but at no point can we reasonably say "that is not a human."
What is really at stake here is personhood, not humanity. At what point do we grant humans the status of "person," and at what point do we remove that status? Some, like yourself, try to set passage through the birth canal as the marker for personhood. This is as external and as artificial as marking high school graduation as the entrance into hood. Yes, a significant change has occurred, but not nearly so significant as to warrant a change from non-person unworthy of the right to life to person whose right to life is inviolable. Other arbitrary markers are 13 months after conception, 24 months after conception, some even move the point to a couple of months past birth. However, research has shown that the human brain isn't fully developed until around 27 years old. How about we set that as the marker, then all those pesky high school kids would be fair game, since society would deem them as non-persons.
Then again, we can stop the moral gymnastics and work to protect both the born and unborn.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008 10:52 PM
Well, if you want to use that kind of silly logic then you should back up even further and say that every sperm and every egg also could become a human child. Therefore, every time a woman has her period and discharges an egg, a potential human has been destroyed. And every time a man masturbates or has a wet dream, millions of potential humans have been destroyed.
I really don't know why we're having this debate. We males shouldn't even pretend to understand this issue. Unless you have actually been impregnated and understand it from experience, you have no business passing any kind of judgment on women who choose to abort a pregnancy.
It's just another example of the power-hungry, white, male status quo trying to impose its corrupt morality on others.
Thursday, March 27, 2008 8:46 AM
Ryan, lets go back to high school biology, because it is apparent you have forgotten some of the basics. Neither a sperm cell, nor an egg cell has the genetic make-up to be considered a human, let alone a person. As such, they can only have potential status. A fetus, who is genetically human, is a human being. A fetus is not a "potential" human, he or she is a human. Personhood is a special, debated status that ethicists use to debate when this human being is granted the full rights that human society gives to human persons. (For example, many considered that Terri Schiavo, while still a human being, was no longer a person due to her loss of brain function.)
As for the feminist argument, the entire legal system is founded on people passing judgment on other people regardless of shared experience. By that logic, black people cannot pass judgment on white people because a black person doesn't know what its like to be white. That's the kind of logical hoops, you are trying to jump through. "How dare you judge me! You don't know what its like to be an alcoholic, a corporate executive, a pastor, a addict, a _______."
In my worldview, human beings are endowed by their Creator with life and dignity regardless of what society thinks. This is the basis for condemning (the Europeans didn't think native groups were fully persons either), ism (in some cultures women are seen as having less than full personhood), , war, oppression, etc. Neither society, nor the mother of the child gets to decide whether a child is worthy of life. And that is judgment anyone man, woman, or child can make no matter how loudly feminists and their symathizers protest.
Thursday, March 27, 2008 5:06 PM
I disagree. A fetus is no more a human than an acorn is a tree. Now, can a fetus become a human? Sure, if it grows under the right circumstances, just like any seed. But there is no guarantee that a fetus will become a human, just as there is no guarantee that an acorn is going to become an oak tree. They are both potentialities--not certainties.
And you're missing the whole point of what you call "the feminist argument." Of course, all human beings form judgments of one another. The big problem happens when one group emerges as the status quo--those with power--then their judgments become corrupt and turn into prejudices. Then they begin to act on their prejudices (racism, sexism, anti-semitism, homophobia, etc.) and oppress the powerless.
This gives rise to what Walter Wink calls the Domination System. You conservative evangelicals like to personify it and call it "evil" or "the devil" which I don't care for because it shifts the blame from us humans to some kind of demonic scapegoat.
If there is one consistent message in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, that's it. It is not to participate in the Domination System. We do this by very simple, yet difficult things: loving one another--even our enemies--caring for those in need (i.e. victims of the Domination System), conducting ourselves in a peaceful (civilly disobedient) manner in the face of Domination (as Gandhi and MLK Jr. did so beautifully) in hopes of exposing the Domination System for the violent monstrosity it really is.
Whether we want to admit it or not, you and I, as white males, are a major part of that Domination System in our society. I know you like to think that white males are somehow victims in our society--getting unfairly blamed for all the problems and evils in the world. But if you're honest, it's not unfair at all. Yes, it's a fact that is hard to swallow--nobody wants to be one of the bad guys--but you cannot deny that white males still control our society, especially the corporate/economic spheres and the political (which thankfully will most certainly change in a big way next election).
Thursday, March 27, 2008 11:30 PM
Unfortunately for your argument, human biology is different from plant biology. While an acorn lies in a dormant state for a long period of time until places in the right conditions to begin its development, a human fetus begins development from the moment of conception. It is a human person in process as much as a five year old. There is no dormant period in which we can call the fetus a potentiality. The fetus’ humanity is actualized. Again, the question is over personhood, which I have already shown to be a faulty debate. The best course of action is to recognize the personhood and rights of the fetus from conception, AND to do what it takes to care for the child after birth.
In the case of abortion, you need to rethink just who is playing the role of the tion system. It sure isn’t the man depriving a human person of life through procedures any moral person would label as . It is a woman asserting her will over another person based on her own self-interest. The same theology of personhood, rooted in the imago dei, that declares , ism, and oppression as moral evils, is the same theology that acknowledges abortion as a moral evil. You like to use this theology when it suits your purposes to oppose white-male tion, yet abandon it when others use it to oppose the evils of anyone else.
Friday, March 28, 2008 12:43 PM
Great debating here by both of you. It's nice to see some civility when it comes to this subject.
Friday, March 28, 2008 5:34 PM
Thanks, jjarse2. Sam and I have had lots of practice debating each other. But we're not that civil. We're really mean and vicious, but in a gentle and loving sort of way. ;)
Saturday, March 29, 2008 2:34 PM
Sam wrote: "There is no dormant period in which we can call the fetus a potentiality."
But the only reason a fertilized egg begins to grow is because it leaves the fallopian tubes and enters the uterus. In other words it grows only because it is moved to a growth-conducive environment and begins to receive a steady supply of nutrients (just as an acorn does when it is planted and watered).
Also scientists have been successfully freezing embryos for a couple of decades now, so, yes, embryos also are perfectly capable of lying dormant much as any seed.
Two years before I was born, my mother got pregnant; however the fertilized egg did not move out of her fallopian tube (a tubal or ectopic pregnancy). If that embryo had continued to grow in her fallopian tubes, my mother would have died and I would not be here today and we would not be having this lovely discussion. Plus, my two beautiful children would not be here.
Remember Jesus' parable of the seeds? Some seeds fell on the road and were eaten by birds, some fell on rocky ground, some fell among thorns. Finally some seeds fell into good fertile soil and grew and multiplied.
I realize this parable has nothing to do with pregancy, but really, the same thing happens with human pregnancies. Not every human "seed" reaches maturity. Sometimes that happens by nature, sometimes we are forced to do it. My potential "brother" did not see maturity. I did. If that tubal pregnacy had not been aborted then my mother, my brother and I would not be here. Since it was aborted, at least both my mother and I are here.
Anyway, I don't think we really disagree on this issue. I do think abortion is wrong when it is used as "birth control" or when it is performed because one doesn't like the gender of the child, or if one finds out the child will have down syndrome or some other non-life-threatening problem. But sometimes abortions are necessary. It's not a happy thing, but it's better than both the mother and the potential baby dying.
Sunday, March 30, 2008 4:27 PM
Actually, the fertilized egg begins development immediately whether in the uterus or the fallopian tube. The difference is that one environment is conducive to continued growth and the other is hostile to growth. This is similar to a human child living on land and being tossed into a swimming pool (assuming no flotation devices or swimming ability). By and large, a swimming pool is not conducive to a child's development, and very likely with ensue. Yes, I realize we are arguing over an illustration.
I concede that abortion gets messier when the health of the mother is at risk. I do not wish to diminish the complexity of such cases; however, those cases are not all cases, as I'm sure you'll agree.