You all are ready to move on. I can tell by what you are posting online
that you are done with the massacre in Charleston. I am not.
I am still grieving the loss of 9 innocent lives at the hands of hatred. I am saddened by the loss of promising people
who were waging peace in a world that is clinging so tightly to hatred. I am upset by the confused response of our
society. I know that we will kill Dylann
Roof also. He will be sentenced to death
for killing nine innocent people, and what will be solved? What will change? What is the gain from all of this? I see nothing. I see only sadness and division.
I have questions for God.
I want to know, God, why you cannot raise the nine people from the dead. Why, if you can simply take the hand of a
twelve year old girl and say, “Little girl, arise.” And she wakes up after being
dead, why can’t you raise Pastor Pinkney and his fellow church members? They had faith. They had as much faith as the woman who
touched your clothes and was healed of her hemorrhage. They were good people, God. Why did you not raise them from the dead and
startle the world, including Dylann Roof, so that more people would believe you
have the power of life over death?
I am confused. I am
angry. I was, when I was a child, very
proud to be an American, but I am that no longer. I am concerned about what is happening in our
country. We are no longer seeking the
common good. We are seeking individual
gain. We are so concerned about the
glorification of the individual that we are no longer looking at our
neighbors. We no longer see our neighbors
as fellow humans with the same hopes and dreams, aspirations and inspirations
that we have.
Our political leaders are a prime example of what is going
wrong in America. We look for leadership
in time of tragedy and we get rhetoric.
We get political grand-standing.
We get more finger-pointing and scape-goating. That is not leadership. We hear people talk about metal detectors on
churches. We hear about arming more and
more citizens to make ourselves safe.
These are not solutions. These
are not even band-aids. These are only
reactions to a series of incidents that point to a deeper problem; and we DO
have a deep, dark problem.
We have a
problem because we see the poor and we blame them for their own problems. We have a problem because we see the single
mothers and we blame them for their own problems. We have a problem because we see the
unemployed and we blame them for their own problems. We fail to see these people as PEOPLE! Valuable people, created in the image of God,
valuable people, worthy of love and respect, valuable people who have hopes and
dreams and are looking for the exit door to the world of their problems and
finding none.
I think we need to seek the common good. I think we need to realize that we are not
Black Americans, or Native Americans or Asian Americans or European Americans,
We are all Americans, and we need a government of the people, by the people and
FOR the people. We cannot blame
religion. We cannot blame a flag. We cannot blame anyone but ourselves because
we have stopped caring about each other.
I think it is time to look at our neighbor and see the image of
God. I think it is time to look at one
another and see someone worthy of love.
I think it is time to stop blaming and start caring because enough
people are already dead.
