That City Upon A Hill...

With all that has been happening in our country, the United States... the shootings in Dallas, the nationwide protests... the social tensions that plague us as a nation... I have felt the need to look back at what we are about as a nation. To return to its beginnings. To try and remember why we are here in the first place... why we exist as a nation. And that brings me back to what John Winthrop called us in A Model on Christian Charity. We are intended to be “That city upon a hill”, but are we? Have we really ever lived up to our calling?

When Winthrop used that phrase, he was referring to the gospel of Matthew. The full quote from Matthew 5:14-16 reads:

“Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick; and it giveth light unto all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven”.

It was Winthrop's prayer that this nation would be a beacon of light to the world. A place were people could come and hear the Good News. A place were people could practice their Christian faith freely, without persecution from the state. A place where the individual could be a self-made man (or woman), free from the rigid social constraints of class conscience Europe. A place where you could own land and the government couldn't confiscate or occupy it at will (hence the 3^rd amendment which came later). A place where all men could be free to live a quiet and peaceable life. This unfortunately is not the America we live in today.

This year, in the month of July alone, There were at least 5 black women killed in police custody and according to the website, “Mapping Police Violence.com, there were at least 102 unarmed African Americans killed in police violence in 2015. That's approximately 2 a week. I don't believe this is the America Winthrop envisioned and it certainly isn't the land of the free or the home of the brave where we can all live a “quite and peaceable life”. [1Timothy 2:2]

Now I will be the first to admit, that not all of our Founding Fathers were as progressive as the document they wrote, which states that “...all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. ” There were some that didn't believe that the Africans they enslaved were human at all, which is one of the reasons we had a three fifths compromise... a compromise which violated the spirit of our Constitution... a compromise which never should have been made and unfortunately, a compromise we are still feeling the repercussions of. In God's economy, no one is three fifths God's creation... or three fifths his son or daughter and Christ did not die for three fifths of a soul or three fifths of the people, but “God so loved the WORLD (all of it and everyone in it) that He gave his only begotten Son, so that whosoever that believes on Him shall not parish, but have everlasting life.” [John 3:16]

Now this is not the first time we as a nation, have had problems living up to our better selves. Unfortunately, it took a civil war to correct the error of the three fifths compromise. It took the civil rights movement to correct the error of Jim Crow and the real question is what will it take to right our course in the current dark night of our nation's soul? One good thing about all of the turmoil we are currently experiencing is that it is bringing the poison of racism (and hopefully all the other “isms”) to light, so that we can be, once and for all purged of it and the love of God shed abroad in our hearts, so that we can truly be that shining city on a hill Winthrop envisioned.

Check Your Sources

Information is the engine that drives society today.  So many of us hasten to our computers, smartphones or other electronic devices as soon as we get wake up, to get the news of the day... and there's nothing wrong with that.  However we need to slow down and really think about where we are getting our news from, and check our sources.

In 2008, I attended the Rally for the Republic.  An event held by Ron Paul in St.Paul Minnesota.  The event itself was incredible.  I enjoyed all of the speaker Mr. Paul invited and was really impressed by the difference between Mr. Paul's event, and the GOP convention that was taking place directly across the street.  All of Mr. Paul's speakers were informative and substantive and there wasn't a single catch phrase used throughout the entire event.  Inside the arena, it wasn't politics as usual, however, outside the arena was a different story.

Outside the arena, I saw average Americans doing their best to wade through the onslaught of information now available through the internet and books and speaking with other concerned citizens about our changing American landscape.  "Concerned" is the key word.  They were concerned about the country, concerned about their place in it and concerned about where it was headed and they exercised their concern by looking at our nation's past.  Actually, this was why I had come to Minnesota myself, because I shared their concern. But what concerned me more than who was running for president or the Republican convention going on across the street (or the spies they sent over to check us out), or even the protestors that who had come to disrupt that convention, was the vast amount of misinformation I was hearing outside of our convention.

We seem to think, that just because information is published on the internet, that it must be right and many of the people at this convention used the internet to get their information and there's nothing wrong with that, but you still have to check your sources. I realize that my having a background in reality-television gives me a somewhat unfair advantage in this matter, since checking sources for accuracy was part of my job, but their are simple things that anyone can do before they disseminate information, especially when that information will be used by the public to make decisions that will effect our nation. One thing we can all do is check public records when possible.

I conducted a very interesting interview with Ashleighly Moody outside the convention center. He was very open and friendly and had a very interesting take on American History. I really enjoyed doing the interview, however when I got back home, the first thing I did was to check out a story he told about Anthony Johnson. When I first looked on the internet, I found this story online, told exactly as Mr. Moody had told me. But when I checked the public records, I get a completely different story. Take a look at the video below, and you'll see what I mean:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuMS2gFrMe4

It is absolutely essential to have an informed electorate in order for democracy to work. As we enter this next election cycle and we get a new, massive wave of information, please remember to at least ask yourself the question, “Where did this information come from?” And when possible, check it yourself.

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Somewhere around April 20, 2011 I saw a TED speaker video that featured Liz Coleman, who re-invented the Liberal Arts education at Bennington College in the mid 1990's.  I ran across my notes from her TED talk today and was really impressed with what she was able to accomplish and how pertinent it is today.  In reviewing my notes, one statement that she made really resonated with me, "We leave education and values to the fundamentalists who use this to their own benefit to create the absolutes of a theocracy."

"Values"is the word that I want to discuss today.  Ms. Bennington's statement begs the question, "How does one define their values without using or referencing their faith?  And collectively, "How does as society define our values without referencing a single religion?"  I know it can be done, but what is the process?

I know discussion of religious values and social mores is absolutely necessary in defining a societies values, but it has to be an informed discussion, with accurate, non-biased information.  Cliches and catch phrases won't work.  Right wing-religious-hate mongering-political , pseudo journalist- talking heads won't work, and neither will radical atheist religion haters who seek to insult and defame all people of faith.  We all live and have a right to live and believe as we please in this society, so how do we keep the conversation civil with so many distracting and divisive voices out there?

Today, in 2011, in these United States, it is almost impossible to have that conversation.  I say "almost" because I still hold out hope that that conversation can and will take place.  It is needed now more than at any other time in our nations history.  Hopefully we will have this conversation before the next election.  Before things go too far in the wrong direction and it becomes too difficult to find our way back to center... and sanity.

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