Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Is Our Society Unjust

This topic stems from my Sunday school class last Sunday.  I usually avoid religious topics, because when I was homeless I got totally turned off to organized religion by the people who preached at me time after time.  On one occasion I was sleeping in a seat at a large bus stop when two bus drivers sat down nearby and started a loud conversation.  It was about 4:30 in the morning, and I'd been sleeping out in the open, wrapped in my sleeping bag, for three or four hours.  The bus drivers knew that.  They intentionally talked loudly to wake me up.  The first part I remember hearing was something like, "My life has become so much better since I took Jesus as my personal lord and savior."  They continued talking loudly about how great their lives were because they were born again Christians.  I tried to go back to sleep, but I couldn't.  What really irked me was that these were two of the same bus drivers that would turn their bus's air conditioning on FULL BLAST, IN THE WINTER, while driving the late night routes where homeless people, like myself, would sleep on the bus.  Instead of drawing me toward their religious views, they completely pushed me away.  Because of many people like those two bus drivers, I didn't attend church for several years. 

But now I'm a member of a Methodist church, and participate in a number of church activities, like adult Sunday school.  That brings me to the topic we discussed last Sunday.  It centered around the question, "Is our society just?"  The overwhelming consensus from the born and bread North Carolinians was that our world is definitely not just.  The writer of our lesson asked if we thought that most wealthy people became wealthy by taking advantage of other people.  Most of the people in my class thought that was true, that wealthy people tend to be unscrupulous.  They also had little faith in our politicians in general.  One lady summed it up by saying that all the evil in society today was overwhelming, and she just didn't  know what to do about it.  People spoke about how things were when they were younger, people never worked on Sunday, stores were closed on Sunday, and people in general seemed much more religious.  One woman said she didn't know what to do about all the bad influences coming from other parts of the country.  This is an underlying belief I see a lot here in North Carolina, and the South in general.  After all, this is the Bible Belt.  People here often feel like they're being attacked by "liberal influences" of all kinds.  The deep seated belief is that people here are devout Christians, and the secular culture of the big cities is decaying our society. 

At that point, I had to speak up.  I said something like, "As you all know, I've spent most of my adult life in California, and I grew up in the North, so I have a much different point of view that probably won't be very popular here."  I went on to say that when you live in other parts of the country, outside the South, you tend to think of The South as the land where some of the worst tragedies in U.S. history happened.  As we all know, the Southern economy was built on slavery.  Not just were people enslaved, but they were literally ripped from villages on another continent, and shipped to the U.S. in chains.  Here they were separated from their family members, and sold to the highest bidder.  That highest bidder was most likely a devout Christian.  The African slaves worked on land that was taken from American Indians, which was the biggest genocide in human history.  That genocide, which continues today in some ways, was led by highly religious people. Then came the Civil War, the deadliest war ever to U.S. citizens.  As we all know, The South seceded from the Union.   Ultimately the North won, the nation became one again, and the slaves were freed, but most lived in poverty for generations.  During those generations, black people were terrorized and sometimes lynched often by people who thought of themselves as devout Christians.  It took nearly 100 years for those descendants of freed slaves to get the right to vote.  The racism born of slavery is much less vivid than it was years ago, but it's still there, especially in the older people of the South, both black and white.  The younger generations are much less racist today than their parents and grandparents were.  I didn't go into all of that in class, but I got the point across that much of the country sees the South as a land of hypocrisy, where people are devoutly Christian, but hundreds of years of atrocities have happened here that didn't happen in other parts of the country.  Or if they did happen, it wasn't to the same degree. 

Now, after saying my piece, I expected to be verbally annihilated by members of the class.  What happened surprised me, and took us right to the core of our lesson for the day.  Several members of the class spoke about how they remember there being white only restaurants or restrooms during their childhood, and they accepted that because it was considered "normal" here at that time.  Other class members spoke of having black people who worked around their houses doing odd jobs, but when it came time to eat lunch, the white family would go inside and eat at the dining room table, while the black workers ate at a picnic table outside.  That, also was considered normal here when my class members were children.  As it worked out, we had a really good discussion about the bad things that happen in society that we, as individuals, do not speak or act against.  That was the whole point of Sunday's lesson. 

One lady summed up most people's feelings at the end of class by saying that there was so much terrible stuff going on in the world, that she just didn't know where to start to try and change things.  In addition, she felt helpless against the huge amount of tragedy and injustice in the world.  At that point, class was over, so we left it there. 

But that showed me just how different my viewpoint of the world is compared to most of the people around me here.  Not only have I spent time living in several different parts of the country, but I got into BMX freestyle (bike trick riding) which led to me living and working with people who were world class athletes, minor celebrities, and entrepreneurs.  In know several people who are wealthy, and most of them are really decent human beings, not the robber baron types the Sunday school lesson spoke of.  They also know how to make stuff happen, which is also is something that's not as common here in this area.  As an early participant in several of the action sports, I've seen people I know not only create entire new sports, but create entire new industries around those sports.  I mean, to all of us that met Mat Hoffman (look him up on You Tube) in the 1980's, it's hard to say anything is impossible.  We've seen Mat and many others do the impossible year after year, in athletic pursuits, in healing and overcoming injuries, and in business.  When you're hanging around people like that, almost anything seems possible if you're willing to work at it hard enough.

So... what DO you do if you see a world that seems over run with tragedy, unfairness, and injustice.  First of all, you try and figure out what bugs you the most.  Poverty? Homelessness? Childhood cancer?  Unhealthy living?  Political issues?  There are thousands of issues out there that need attention.  If you want to make a difference in one of them, pick the one that is most important to you. I read a book once, I think it was one of Dan Millman's books, where the author said something like, "resign as general manager of the world, you can't do everything yourself."  Then find something small that you can do to help the problem.  You could make a few sandwiches and hand them out to homeless people.  If you play guitar and sing, for example, you could put on a one person show for children and their families in the local hospital.  You can give blood.  You can volunteer at the Red Cross or thousands of other places that need volunteers.  You could visit the shut-ins in your area.  That's something that several of the people in my Sunday school class do.  Find a little niche where you can help, and do what you can on a small level.  Then, when you start to get a better grasp of what those people need, find like minded people who may be interested in helping you.  The internet and social media these days make that process much easier.  Then take the next obvious step.  Do something a little bigger or a little more involved if it's needed.  Or commit to doing something helpful on a regular basis if you can.  Keep taking the next obvious steps, one by one.  You never know where that journey might take you. 




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