Just a bit ago, I heard of the growing violence in South Chicago. This is the community both Wright and Obama have been “tending” for years now. Obviously, they haven’t been successful.
I’ve been saying, for weeks now – in a variety of ways – that the real needs of any individual are not material ones, but spiritual.
A man can have the finest of educations, the best job or worldly possessions and still be the unhappiest of souls. But this is what Obama offers to heal his people. It’s not enough.
The Wright church does not teach the Christian gospel. If you heard Pope Benedict when he was here, were his words not strikingly different from Wright’s?
Did one man’s words repel you, while you wanted to embrace the other’s?
The seeds of anger and hatred have been scattered all over Obama’s community. And they are reaping what they’ve sown. I first saw it in the video of the incredibly young black child spewing his hatred of, and intention to kill, Bush.
I can only hope and pray some of them can be saved.
My father’s early life was such that one might say he shared more with Blacks than perhaps Wright or Obama. He was born into poverty. In the south. But with his Baptist upbringing, he was not poor in spirit.
His home had a dirt floor with no plumbing or electricity. He picked cotton in the fields as a child, asking only that he be allowed to go to school a few hours a day. His family was targeted by the KKK, and experienced the cross set aflame by them.
He was told he should continue his schooling, and did graduate from Occidental College. But the school that always held such a tender place in his heart was one that is now called Berea College in Kentucky. He finished high school there. It was founded for the poorest of Appalachian children. Black and white.
It was a man of faith who realized his dream in 1855 to build a school for the two races to be schooled together. I do hope that even today it’s still true to its Christian founding and encourages strong moral values.
Mr. Obama wants to improve our educational system. His church needs a better message. Perhaps he should look to Kentucky and this humble little one as the prototype for the Hope and Change his community needs.
