Saturday, July 20, 2019

Spinal Chord




Our spinal chord is the center of our body's functions. It houses our central nervous system which sends impulses for thought and movement. It keeps our bodies upright, enables us to bend, and sit.

Damage to the spinal chord could severely alter our lives. 

The way we live our lives has a spinal chord too. It is called our soul. Our soul is comprised of values and codes of conduct. Our values and codes of conduct provide guidance for handling day to day living in a healthy, positive and supportive way for ourselves, family, friends, neighbors and strangers.

We develop our values and codes of conduct in many ways. At first we learn from the environment in which we were raised. As we mature, we keep or change what we learn to fit who we are becoming. This change can happen over our entire life as we expand our
    knowledge through new experiences and people.

Many of us use our religion's values and codes of conduct for our soul (there are approximately 4,300 religions and about 5.8 billion people of our 7.5 billion population, approximately 84% claim affiliation with one of those religions). And the atheists I know follow a code of conduct to cause not harm and live for the common good of all.

I wonder how our religious values and codes of conduct are influencing our current political life?

How is it okay to pit people against one another through race, the color of our skin?

It appears to me the political stage is being used as the means to win the sought after office through separating us.

Winning at all cost. Proceed with caution.

A departure from our values and codes of conduct could severely alter our souls.

Jesus asked Saul why he was persecuting him (Acts chapter 9). Saul was executing followers of Jesus. Saul was operating from his learned values and codes of conduct. And then he experienced something new, blindness and dependence on others. And he experienced new people through this blindness which opens him to a new way of thinking and acting. Saul becomes Paul and is the greatest teacher of Jesus way of living, his way of love and common purpose.

Jesus links himself to humanity in this passage by stating that when we do something to another we are doing it to Jesus. This for me is an answer to why Jesus died in such a horrific and brutal way. Jesus took on all of humanities persecutions (before, during and after his life). These persecutions occur in may different ways and in this post I am pointing us toward our political life. How we act politically is a persecution to those who are harmed.

One political harm is racism. 

Racism is a sin because it says that one color of skin is better that any other color of skin. Racism pits us against each other by giving us the idea that 'I am better that you.' And this attitude has been imbedded into our legal and economic systems. Making it difficult for people of color to flourish and have equality throughout the established systems. We can change this together!

In God's eyes we are equal. Paul states this clearly in Galatians chapter 3: "there is no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free, no woman or man because we are all one in Jesus Christ (every human being is created in the image and likeness of God. We come from the same source. We are family).

As a nation we have done some really great and really horrific things.

We put a man on the moon. Why can't we end racism? 
Maybe our current political state is a call to do just that.

We are all equal. 

Let's live it! 

In our interactions with each other.
In our day to day choices. 

Together, let's create a giant leap for all human kind by ending racism!


+++++++ 
Resources:

White Fragility, why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism by Robin Deangelo
So you want to talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo
America's Original Sin by Jim Wallis
Why we can't wait by Martin Luther King
and these;