Political rants are not necessarily enjoyable because it invokes the idea that one person's belief is of greater or lesser value than the person they're opposing, but I like to see myself as someone who can find common ground in even some of the most unbearable of topics. The contents of this blog is not meant to offend or anger anyone, but a few of you may look as unimpressed as George Washington once you've finishing reading what I have to say.
America is not the greatest country on the planet anymore. Our soil that was once fertile with a thriving body of different cultures and beliefs is now stained by our inability to see past our own indifferences. We are tearing each other apart and no one is seemingly interested in putting out the fire that we have spread. As a nation built on freedom, we have no choice but to ask ourselves, are we really free? Does freedom still ring or does it just vibrate on occasion?
We have become a nation where we use God as a frontline to justify our hatred and disgust for another human being's way of living and believing. "God hates gays." "God hates Obama." God hates this, God hates that. Let me tell you what God actually hates. (Proverbs 6:16-19) NIV
"16There are six things the Lord hates,seven that are detestable to him:God hates pridefulness, killing innocent people, looking down upon one another as if one sin is greater than the other. People who stir up conflict in the community by continuing to add fuel to an already well-lit fire. It is our quickness to let hatred drip from our mouths that God really hates.
17haughty eyes,
a lying tongue,
hands that shed innocent blood,
18a heart that devises wicked schemes,
feet that are quick to rush into evil,
19a false witness who pours out lies
and a person who stirs up conflict in the community."
Our country stopped being great the day we forgot the true definition of freedom. Being free is not a right anymore, not when our ultimate solution to our every problem is to make another law. How long can our Constitution get before we realize that we are strangling ourselves with our own flag? In theory, we like to believe that we are free because that's the only definition of America that we have ever known. Our grandparents, their grandparents, and their grandparents before them all died so that we could use this soil as a building block for our future. They scribbled our Constitution with a feather so that we as a nation could educate ourselves, motivate ourselves, and pursue peace and happiness as though it were some goal that we might one day reach. They wanted us to be free from religious persecution, to make our own decisions, and to do what was best for our families.
We took that idea and stretched it until we don't know what freedom looks like anymore. Now we are persecuting the religious, letting our political parties decide what's best for the nation as a whole, and stripping each other of our ability to make our own decisions. We are so prideful of our patriotism that we believe that only the ones who are worthy of independence are the ones that follow the same beaten path. We demand some rights, yet would rather die than to give them to those that live differently than us.
We have become a nation where we believe that we should all be genetic clones of one another. We're frustrated when someone can't speak English, our skin crawls when we see people of the same sex kiss one another, and we hold our belongings tightly to our bodies when someone of a different race sits beside us on a bus. At what point in our history did we become so foolish? So selfish to believe that we are faultless, that our mistakes can be overlooked while the mistakes of others must be scrutinized.
The other day someone who doesn't know me or my passion for immigration said to me that he hates when people come into this country without being able to speak "American." He, along with many others, are the type of people that become angry when they hear things like "God Bless America" sung in Spanish or other languages like the Coco-Cola commercial during the Super Bowl. How can we be so selfish to think that this soil was created solely for our fruition? That no one else can enter unless they conform to our ways. If you haven't noticed, there are a lot of faults in our stars and this land wasn't "our land" to begin with. Maybe it would be beneficial to hear what immigrants have to say about this nation, to listen to their perspective on why they still believe we are the greatest country on the planet, because somewhere down the line we have forgotten.
We point our finger at Obama, at our opposing political parties, at Muslims, gays, minorities, the younger generation... anyone that doesn't fit the mold. We are so adamant to place blame in a certain direction without taking a minute to see how prideful we are being... that we can't give the tolerance to others that we are so quick to demand for ourselves. We get angry when fellow Christians are targeted, but in the same breath we target someone else. It's a tangled web we have weaved and it's as though we believe we can't get out of our prison unless we make another law, another loophole that justifies the things we have done to divide us even further.
Obama is not taking our independence from us. We are taking it from ourselves.
Happy 4th of July. God bless America.
