I have too long been silent, remiss in expressing myself here. I have not been depressed, but I have greatly limited my exposure to news and commentary. I have almost desperately fled the depressing news of the moral decay of America. I have tried to become a regular practitioner of daily prayer and meditation, my focus on personal change. There comes a time that “even the stones cry out”.
America’s busyness, its preoccupation with wealth and success, its religious hypocrisy (prosperity theology) has made many of its citizens blind to the needs of others and the spirit of the gospel. Politics has long been a dirty business, but has sunk to a morally bankrupt level. As long as we have financial success we care not for our own fragile environment, for our long-standing allies, or for “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. . .the homeless, tempest-tossed. . .” We build walls and separate families and children.
Today’s reading, from the Letter of St. James, reads:
My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there”, or, “Sit at my feet,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. . .For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; mercy triumphs over judgment.”
Readers and students of history remember that prosperity, albeit false, came to Germany, lifting it from the Great Depression. It came with a regime that persecuted not only Jews, but the handicapped, the outcasts, those that did not fit the mold of what the powers deemed proper. It came with militarism. It came with National Socialism, Nazism, which seems to be the political wind of today, though not called such in our media, financial or polite circles. First, the Nazis persecuted the minorities and the helpless, then their own people.
Are America’s border walls meant to keep people out or its citizens in?