The Immorality Deception-Great Talk by Congregational Minister
Dr. Robin Meyers Oklahoma University Peace Rally November 14, 2004
As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational Church
in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in
northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City
University.
But you would most
likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette,
where I have been a columnist for six years, and
hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor.
Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched
as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim
to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian. We've
heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having
swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in
moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country,
about exactly what constitutes a moral value -- I mean what
are we talking about.
Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not
if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is
right and wrong, and moral is as moral does. Let me give you just a
few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral
values are on their side:
When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your
deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that
your
critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some
of us who
have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe
that this is not only not moral, but immoral. -- When you live in a
country that has established international rules for waging a just
war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and
then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the
world, you are doing something immoral.
When
you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge
that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn
them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that
we must never return violence for violence and that those who live
by the sword will die by the sword), you are doing something immoral.
When
you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as
the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you
are doing something immoral.
When
you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the
patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero,
you are doing something immoral.
When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says
that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test,
by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will
get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something
immoral.
When you wink at
the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemy
combatants" of the rules of the Geneva convention, which your
own country helped to establish and insists that other countries follow,
you are doing something immoral.
When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys
and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with
you, or with the terrorists -- and then launch a war which enriches
your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted,
instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something immoral.
When
you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a
war
with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit
that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children,
you are doing something immoral.
When
you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was
once the most loved country in the world, and act like it doesn't
matter
what others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have done
something immoral.
When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record
numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of
discrimination, you are doing something immoral.
When
you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus,
who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the
kingdom, you are doing something immoral.
When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect
the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporations that
bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while
our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have
done something immoral. The earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.
When
you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing
is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble
the
enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the
enemy, and the enemy is us.
When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a"
compassionate conservative," using the word which is the essence
of all religious faith -- compassion -- and then show no compassion
for anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry
to you for help, you are doing something immoral.
When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the sick,
but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a
doctor, even if she doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are doing
something immoral.
When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will set women
back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers
who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.
I'm
tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be
a
supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and
gay
rights I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people saying
that I
can't support the troops but oppose the war -- I heard that when I
was your age, when the Vietnam war was raging. We knew that that war
was wrong, and you know that this war is wrong -- the only question
is how many people are going to die before these make-believe Christians
are removed from power
This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of
this
administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who
can turn things around are people like you--young people who are just
beginning to wake up to what is happening to them. It's your country
to take back. It's your faith to take back. It's your future to take
back.
Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends begin
to tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be
wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut.
Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims,
and real Hindus, and real Buddhists -- so do all the faith traditions
of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is precious. Every
human being is precious. Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed
is the opposite of charity. And believing that one has never made a
mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith.
And
war -- war is the greatest failure of the human race -- and thus
the
greatest failure of faith.
There's
an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all: War, what is
it
good for -- absolutely nothing.
And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no
more, that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears
into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb? Indeed How many wars does
it take to know that too many people have died? What if they gave a
war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find out.
Time to march again my friends. Time to commit acts of civil disobedience.
Time to sing, and to pray, and refuse to participate in the madness.
My generation finally stopped a tragic war. You can too!
"Only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Martin
Luther King,
Dr. Robin Meyers
405-842-8897
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