DEFEAT FASCISM

 There used to be a time when disasters brought Americans together. In my lifetime, some have done so. I remember well the assassination of John Kennedy and how, for a time, we all mourned as a country, not as parties or sects. One of the most enduring memories is not of a talk show host mouthing insults but of young John Jr. saluting his father's coffin.

 Then there was the bombing of the federal building it Oklahoma City. As the dust settled over the carnage, President Bill Clinton offered soothing words that convinced us that we would prevail though the gates of Hell had opened to offer us a peak.

For years, disasters damaged us but created harmony. When one part of the country suffered, we all felt pain.

Then there was 9-11. For days we joined hands and resolved that we were one. Then, as the smoke cleared, someone saw an opportunity for partisanship. It took us to a strange place. It eventually led us to a war that unsettled a large part of the Middle East and we still search for ways to overcome the effects.

The awful experience of the Covid pandemic showed us that the forces of evil will utilize a natural catastrophe to divide good people. Americans died needlessly because of the divisiveness but a political party gained traction which now threatens to destroy the America that once mourned together. It's a damned shame. What would the Galilean say?

Leadership

 When I was a boy growing up in rural Arkansas, World War II had just been over five years or so. The results of it touched everyone, each day of the week in some fashion or other.

A playmate’s father couldn’t hold a job for a drinking problem brought on by his experiences in the war.

Mrs. So and So never smiled because her boy was killed in the Pacific.

Another playmate had a neat plastic model of a B-17 but knew nothing about it cause his dad wouldn’t discuss it after he brought it home.

The preacher talked about his comrades finding religion when the bombs started falling.

My aunt found out that the preacher spent the war as a cook who never left the states.

A good friend’s father died flying a fighter plane and he now had a new father.

A classmate’s father only had one arm and she was very sensitive about it.

Many of the cartoons we saw featured characters based on Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo.

The first kid to claim a branch of service while playing war was always a Marine.

We learned that Franklin D. Roosevelt was a true hero for bringing the country through the crisis.

Just musing today: The American military deaths from the war totaled around 330,000 in four years.

America may pass that number in Covid-19 deaths in one year.

One can only wonder what the next generation of kids will talk about on the playgrounds of rural Arkansas, if there are still playgrounds there in five years.

Opposites

 Who was this man on the Judean hill, and who opposes him? Perhaps he could be described in one manner by examining some reactions to what he was teaching.

One doesn’t venture far into a study of the Sermon on the Mount without encountering the word Christology. Simply stated, it means the branch of Christian theology relating to the person, nature, and role of Christ, the Galilean.

With many writers it isn’t simple a study of the man’s life as presented by the writers of the gospels. It descends further, involving the dialectic between the lessons of the Galilean and the stance of those who reacted those lessons. Those reactions vary.

Author Leo Tolstoy, trapped in an unhappy marriage, found solace in the Sermon. In the words of Alexandre Christoyannopoulos, Greek author, lecturer, and Christian pacifist, Tolstoy, at one point in his life, became horrified at the thought that “that life seemed to have no meaning if death was guaranteed to follow.” He even contemplated suicide before turning to a study of religion. As Christoyannopoulos describes the experience of Tolstoy’s seeking of a meaning to life:

“Then came the breakthrough. He observed that the peasants around him—which as a proud aristocrat he had hitherto overlooked—seemed to approach death with calm and serenity. But why? What was it that helped them remain so serene in the face of the apparent futility of life? Tolstoy realised that what they had was ‘faith’. This intrigued Tolstoy, yet it also gave him hope. So he plunged into the Bible with renewed enthusiasm, in the hope that the meaning of life would finally be disclosed to him – and this time, it was.”

Tolstoy evidently found that the teachings in the Sermon, seemingly so antithetical to harmony and success in life, could lead to a perfect state if followed.

Friedrich Naumann, a German liberal politician and Protestant parish pastor is reported to have said that the teachings of the Sermon were incompatible with capitalism. It’s hard to argue with that.

Consider as well the messages polluting our senses from the current mob of “pray for pay” theologians. If one can call their spewing a philosophy, it is one that cannot be more in contrast and opposition to that of the Galilean.

What government today would last upon a policy of not resisting evil, but forgiving it? Indeed, one might eventually come to regard the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount as a body of righteous teachings employed in a cosmic struggle with the forces of everyday life. Perhaps that is why hear so little of them voiced from either the pulpits or the halls of government.

It has taken a crisis of enormous proportions for us to see, as Tolstoy saw, where power derived from principles such as the Galilean espouse may be found. It is being manifested by those whom the inhabitants of Manhattan skyscrapers would call “America’s peasants.” They are finding peace and meaning to life by tending those whom the Galilean would later call, “The least of those among us.” Their lights are shining so brightly that they drown the howling of the hyenas.

Reason

There’s a saying heard often in my profession that it provides situations in which two people, each with honest intent, can review the same set of facts and come to diametrically opposed conclusions. In other words, there are situations in which reasonable people can and do differ in their opinions.

Today, untold numbers of people will make decisions that couldn’t differ more in logic or potential results. We are suffering from a world-wide condition in which exposure to others is bound to increase—greatly increase—our being exposed to, and contracting, a fatal virus. Some will abide by the warnings of science and stay home behind closed doors, enhancing their chances for survival. Others won’t.

Only a minuscule portion of those on both sides of the prospect have ever read, or put much thought into the Sermon on the Mount. The odd thing is that if each person were to read it, they would more than likely use the Galilean’s sermon on that Judean hill to justify their behavior.

After all, he did say, as reported in Matthew 6:25-34 (NIV):

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? 27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?

“And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. 29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

There you go. Couldn’t be clearer. We don’t need no stinkin’ advice from physicians or scientists. We are protected as surely as the fowls of the air are protected. Let’s all gather up and go to church.

But wait, comes the advice from another. He didn’t advise the fowls of the air to go seeking the hungry hawk as an act of righteous defiance. In fact, he asked us to, in 6:33 (NIV) “… seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” First things first, they caution. Oh, and didn’t he, just before coming to The Mount, rebuke the Dark One with "It is also written: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test?'" (Matthew 4:7 NIV)

And they will add, just in case we don’t get the message, that our most honored apostle of the faith will, years in the future, caution his flock in First Corinthians 10:9, (NIV): "We should not test Christ, as some of them did--and were killed by snakes."

What’s a person to think? Maybe this: The Galilean felt his Lord had given us a brain to use. Might he smile to see us trust it?