Today as I was scrolling through my FaceBook feed I saw a link to an article that caught my attention. Not only did it catch my attention, it shocked and disgusted me. The link sent you to an article about a group of people calling on others to do something rather disgusting with the American flag and then post pictures of this act on the internet. The goal was to protest certain aspects of American society that the promoters of this protest disagree with. Just so you will know I think I agree with the protesters in that these specific parts of American society, which aren't very important to this article, are things that we should be working against. I can't say for sure though, because the images they showed didn't allow me to focus on the issues they were concerned with. The images flipped switches in my brain that didn't allow me to think about what they were saying, instead I could only focus on how they were saying it. This, in my mind at least, means that there attempt to draw attention to something has failed. Instead of getting people to think about their issues they will mainly cause people to reject them and only think about the poor way they were trying to get their point across.
Something else about this article disturbed me even more than the images of the American flag being disrespected. When I read the comments left by people who had read this article, or at least looked at the images posted with it, I saw people calling for the protesters to be forced out of the United States or stating that they should be locked away in prison, or worse, that they should be beaten or killed. The protesters were disrespecting the flag, but the people posting these comments were disrespecting it just a much if not more.
The US flag is an important and powerful symbol of the United States of America. It symbolizes the rights and freedoms that the vast majority of Americans claim to hold dear. We look at the flag and remember what it is that makes America as great of a country as it is. But we have to remember, the flag, while it is a symbol of freedom and liberty, is itself not freedom or liberty.
The protesters in the article mentioned above, people who try to make a point by burning the flag, even those who some would say disrespect the flag by wearing it on a skimpy bathing suit, these people are making use of the actual freedoms that the flag represents. To say that they should be jailed or killed or forced out of the country for these acts is saying that freedom of speech is something that you don't really respect. Saying these things, or acting upon them, is the most extreme way I can think of to disrespect the flag. You are saying that the symbol means more than what it symbolizes. You are twisting the meaning of the flag and turning it into something that has no meaning. You are doing more damage to the flag than anyone ever could with a match. If we idolize the flag we diminish what it stands for. If we outlaw the desecration of the flag we turn it into a meaningless piece of cloth that represents nothing. Free speech is one of the ways in which America is truly exceptional, in many other countries that have democratic governments, often times more democratic than the US government, in countries where people have the right to speak out against their government, in places where the media is free to operate as it sees fit, there are still laws to limit speech.
In many Western European nations there are laws against hate speech, there are laws banning the sale of particular book, there are laws outlawing the display of certain historical symbols. We don't have these laws in America because we value the right of free speech to a point that we are willing to put up with distasteful and hateful speech. We protect all speech to guard against a slippery slope of laws that could lead to a great restriction of our speech and expression. We do this because we realize that our own personal comfort and desire to not be offended is secondary to our need to be able to express ourselves. This is, to a large extent, what makes us America.
You will often hear that the flag should not be disrespected because of all of the brave men and women who fought for the flag. I don't think this is true. I hope that these brave men and women were fighting for the rights and liberties and freedoms the flag symbolizes, I hope that they were fighting for the things that truly make America special, I hope that they were fighting for their fellow Americans. If they were actually fighting for the flag, fighting for the symbol instead of what it symbolizes, then they weren't fighting for America, they were fighting for a nice piece of graphic design made out of cloth.
The American flag is a wonderful symbol that I take great pride in, but not in the symbol itself, but instead in what it symbolizes. The flag you see flying against a bright blue sky was probably made by underpaid workers in a factory in China, the things it symbolizes actually came from America. The flag itself is employed to sell used cars and soft drinks and amusement park tickets, but what it symbolizes is a great country where we respect everyone's right to think and believe and say what they want, even if we disagree with them. The American flag should, in my opinion, not be disrespected, but we have to remember all of the ways it can be disrespected. Making the flag more important than what it symbolizes, valuing a piece of cloth more than the ideals it represents, is the worst way possible to disrespect the flag.
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Thursday, June 25, 2015
What it means to me to be a Southerner
I may currently live in the Netherlands, but I am an American, more than that I am a proud American. I am more than just a proud American though, I am also a proud Southerner. I was born and raised in Nashville, I have hiked most of the southern half of the Appalachian Trail. I have spent decent amounts of time in most of the South's big cities and many of its small towns, I have experienced my homeland in almost every way it exists and I love its variety and all of its virtues. Don't get me wrong, I know that it isn't perfect, but I also know how close to perfect it can be.
The thing is that the South has a self esteem problem. I lived in Seattle for a while and I was somewhat shocked at how negatively the South was viewed. Many people outside of the South seem to only think of it is an uneducated, ignorant, racist place. There are pockets of those faults in the South, there can be no doubt about that, but there are also areas facing those same issues in every other part of America. Not only do some individuals from outside of the South gloss over their own problems while associating those same issues with the South they also ignore all of the great things about the South. We have an amazing literary, musical, and artistic heritage. No other part of America and very few in the world can claim a culinary tradition as rich and wonderful as the South. Very few places on Earth tend to be as warm and friendly as the South. Still most people think of us as hillbillies who do nothing but make moonshine, walk around barefoot, hate minorities, and marry our cousins. This makes it hard for Southerners to find something to be proud of.
So we rebel. I am not talking about the act of the states succeeding from the Union, but I am talking about the biggest thing the South ever did, breaking away and forming its own country, as something that many cling to as a source of pride. Sure, you can make fun of us but we have already shown that we are willing to set out on our own and make our own way in the world. We decided we didn't need the rest of America and we put our money where our mouth was. We are rebellious, we see ourselves as self sufficient, we are risk takers, and we have the history to prove it. Many take extreme pride in that, because it is seen to be the truth, because it pisses other people off, and because we have not been allowed to be proud of much of anything else. Our pride is just as rebellious as our actions.
The problem is that the thing we take pride in is very complicated. It is all of the things mentioned above, but it is also inextricably wrapped up with slavery and racism and religion and many other things. You can not in an honest fashion remove slavery from the Civil War, the Civil War would almost certainly not have happened if not for slavery. Yes, other issues were also at play, but slavery was, by far, the primary issue.
This is a problem for a lot of Southerners. We want, we need, something to be proud of. The thing that many choose to be proud of has a lot of problems and so they have decided to ignore or deny those problems and focus only on what makes them proud. This is not an honest way of looking at the issue. When we look at the Civil War honestly it becomes something much more shameful than we would like it to be. This is, in all reality, a problem for the South.
I think I have an answer though, it isn't an easy answer, but I believe it is an effective one. We need to find something new to be proud of.
If the South put the hard work into changing the way the South is seen by the rest of the world, if we made it our primary goal to eliminate racism, through not only laws but by looking at our personal actions and beliefs as well, if we made sure that everyone truly had equal opportunities and was equally welcomed everywhere, then we would have something to really be proud of. In taking on this challenge we would have to face our past, all of it, the good and the bad, We would have to also take a good, hard, look at our present and figure out how to make things better for all Southerners. When I say all Southerners I mean all Southerners including all races, nationalities, skin colors, genders, and sexual orientations. We can, and should, be willing to admit to the racism in our past, the racism that still exists, and to do everything we can to eliminate it. If we do this no one could talk bad about us any more. They would have to face their own problems with race and other forms of bigotry and work to eliminate those. They would then probably wind up seeing the other wonderful things that exist and have always existed in the South. To borrow a phrase, if we did this then the South would truly rise again. Not as the old South, but as a new and vastly better South, and we wouldn't just rise, we would exceed and would become the leaders for the entire country. We could help all of America become a better, more welcoming, more fair, and more equal place. This is what Southern pride should be about, not a past where we have to cherry pick things to be proud of.
The thing is that the South has a self esteem problem. I lived in Seattle for a while and I was somewhat shocked at how negatively the South was viewed. Many people outside of the South seem to only think of it is an uneducated, ignorant, racist place. There are pockets of those faults in the South, there can be no doubt about that, but there are also areas facing those same issues in every other part of America. Not only do some individuals from outside of the South gloss over their own problems while associating those same issues with the South they also ignore all of the great things about the South. We have an amazing literary, musical, and artistic heritage. No other part of America and very few in the world can claim a culinary tradition as rich and wonderful as the South. Very few places on Earth tend to be as warm and friendly as the South. Still most people think of us as hillbillies who do nothing but make moonshine, walk around barefoot, hate minorities, and marry our cousins. This makes it hard for Southerners to find something to be proud of.
So we rebel. I am not talking about the act of the states succeeding from the Union, but I am talking about the biggest thing the South ever did, breaking away and forming its own country, as something that many cling to as a source of pride. Sure, you can make fun of us but we have already shown that we are willing to set out on our own and make our own way in the world. We decided we didn't need the rest of America and we put our money where our mouth was. We are rebellious, we see ourselves as self sufficient, we are risk takers, and we have the history to prove it. Many take extreme pride in that, because it is seen to be the truth, because it pisses other people off, and because we have not been allowed to be proud of much of anything else. Our pride is just as rebellious as our actions.
The problem is that the thing we take pride in is very complicated. It is all of the things mentioned above, but it is also inextricably wrapped up with slavery and racism and religion and many other things. You can not in an honest fashion remove slavery from the Civil War, the Civil War would almost certainly not have happened if not for slavery. Yes, other issues were also at play, but slavery was, by far, the primary issue.
This is a problem for a lot of Southerners. We want, we need, something to be proud of. The thing that many choose to be proud of has a lot of problems and so they have decided to ignore or deny those problems and focus only on what makes them proud. This is not an honest way of looking at the issue. When we look at the Civil War honestly it becomes something much more shameful than we would like it to be. This is, in all reality, a problem for the South.
I think I have an answer though, it isn't an easy answer, but I believe it is an effective one. We need to find something new to be proud of.
If the South put the hard work into changing the way the South is seen by the rest of the world, if we made it our primary goal to eliminate racism, through not only laws but by looking at our personal actions and beliefs as well, if we made sure that everyone truly had equal opportunities and was equally welcomed everywhere, then we would have something to really be proud of. In taking on this challenge we would have to face our past, all of it, the good and the bad, We would have to also take a good, hard, look at our present and figure out how to make things better for all Southerners. When I say all Southerners I mean all Southerners including all races, nationalities, skin colors, genders, and sexual orientations. We can, and should, be willing to admit to the racism in our past, the racism that still exists, and to do everything we can to eliminate it. If we do this no one could talk bad about us any more. They would have to face their own problems with race and other forms of bigotry and work to eliminate those. They would then probably wind up seeing the other wonderful things that exist and have always existed in the South. To borrow a phrase, if we did this then the South would truly rise again. Not as the old South, but as a new and vastly better South, and we wouldn't just rise, we would exceed and would become the leaders for the entire country. We could help all of America become a better, more welcoming, more fair, and more equal place. This is what Southern pride should be about, not a past where we have to cherry pick things to be proud of.
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Why I am a Christian...
I am a Christian, some may think that that is an unlikely statement from someone like me, a gay, liberal, same sex married, living in one of the least religious countries in the world, to make, but it is true. I am a Christian.
I wouldn't have always said this. I was raised a Christian, for years I went to church every Sunday with my parents and listened to preachers talk about heaven and hell and sin and righteousness,but it never really clicked with me. I couldn't accept that the Earth was only 6,000 years old when there are 10,000 year old trees in California. I couldn't believe that a flood covered the entire planet when there was no evidence to support that this event ever happened. I couldn't accept that people would go to hell just because they had never heard of Jesus, or if they had they had they may have only heard of him as a myth perpetuated by capitalists in the west. I certainly couldn't accept that I was going to hell for something that I had no choice in and so church and me didn't get along very well.
As I got older I went to church with a few of my friends, here I was either treated like someone they wished wasn't there because my gayness or strange appearance (yeah, I am an old punk) made them uncomfortable or I was embraced by people who seemed to only care about the fact that I was gay and seemed to believe that church was a place to mainly commiserate on how badly we had been treated by other churches. None of this seemed to fit very well into what I had read in the Bible and I came to the conclusion that churches only existed to give people a chance to either wallow in their own misery or as an imaginary high ground that allowed its members to look down on others. Either way I didn't want to be there.
This wound up changing when I found a church that seemed to have a greater reason to exist than complimenting or commiserating with its members. You see, quite by accident, I found a church, Hobson United Methodist Church in Nashville Tennessee, that existed for more than this. It exists because people exist that are hurt and left out and disenfranchised for any number of reasons. I didn't know that this place would renew my faith, I didn't know that this place would welcome me, and I certainly didn't know that this place would open my eyes to the world around wider than they had ever been opened before, but it did, and I am very thankful for it.
Hobson is an unusual church, it is a multi-racial church though most of the members are African American. It promotes a theology called "Black Theology" that looks at the words of Jesus Christ and sees not only teachings about salvation and forgiveness but also profound lessons about and a call for justice. It sees all of us as imperfect people, equal in our imperfections but also equally worthy of love. Black theology reaches beyond the selfish reasons many people believe, their quest for personal salvation, and sees that all of us are sinners and that none deserve salvation, so we are, in all ways possible, equal. We can not condemn others unless we are blind to our own faults and shortcomings. We can not see ourselves as superior to anyone else unless we have bought into a lie. Black theology says that God loves us all equally and to deny this is an injustice that must be spoken against.
My church looked at me and didn't see a strange looking gay man, my church looked at me and saw me, George, a man trying to live my life as honestly as I can. One Sunday we had two women preach about a story in the Bible where a man prayed to God to let him win a battle against his enemy and if God let him do this he would return home and sacrifice the first person to greet him. This person turned out to be the man's own daughter. Many preachers see this story and talk about how strong this man's faith was, the two women who preached that Sunday, two women in love with each other, told us there was a different way of seeing this story. They made us aware that what we read in the Bible represented what the men who had written down the story thought of it. They reminded us that this may have not been the way God wanted us to see it. You see a young girl lost her life in this story but she was never named, but God knew her name. At Hobson we know each other's names. You aren't the homeless man at Hobson, you are Victor. You aren't the divorced woman at Hobson, you are Pam. I wasn't the white guy or the gay guy at Hobson, I was George because none of us were different, we were just who we are and God loves us as who we are. We aren't qualified to second guess God and so we love each other as who we are because that's what Christ tells us to do.
Tonight I was reminded of why I am a Christian as I was searching through youtube looking for videos of one of my favorite musical groups, The Blind Boys of Alabama. This is a group of gospel singers that started out at a school for black, blind children in Alabama decades ago and that are still making amazing music. One of the videos I watched was the Blind Boys singing "If I had a Hammer". This is, of course, a well known folk song, but when the Blind Boys sing it there is no doubt that it is also a gospel song. When an elderly back, blind man stands in front of a crowd and sings about a hammer of justice and a hammer of freedom there is no doubt that you are hearing the gospel. Hobson taught me this and for this I am forever blessed. This is why I am a Christian, not because it will get me into heaven, although I hope it will, but because the entire world is just as deserving of heaven as I am and the entire world is as deserving of a decent life and justice while we are here on Earth. Christ didn't teach us to look down on or condemn anyone, he taught us that we are all equal and to do what we can to lift each other up. Christ's message was one of love for everyone and this is why I am a Christian.
If you are in the Nashville area I encourage you to pay a visit to Hobson United Methodist Church some Sunday, it doesn't matter who you are or what you wear, the only thing that matters is that you are ready to be loved and to love others. That's why we are all here in the first place.
I wouldn't have always said this. I was raised a Christian, for years I went to church every Sunday with my parents and listened to preachers talk about heaven and hell and sin and righteousness,but it never really clicked with me. I couldn't accept that the Earth was only 6,000 years old when there are 10,000 year old trees in California. I couldn't believe that a flood covered the entire planet when there was no evidence to support that this event ever happened. I couldn't accept that people would go to hell just because they had never heard of Jesus, or if they had they had they may have only heard of him as a myth perpetuated by capitalists in the west. I certainly couldn't accept that I was going to hell for something that I had no choice in and so church and me didn't get along very well.
As I got older I went to church with a few of my friends, here I was either treated like someone they wished wasn't there because my gayness or strange appearance (yeah, I am an old punk) made them uncomfortable or I was embraced by people who seemed to only care about the fact that I was gay and seemed to believe that church was a place to mainly commiserate on how badly we had been treated by other churches. None of this seemed to fit very well into what I had read in the Bible and I came to the conclusion that churches only existed to give people a chance to either wallow in their own misery or as an imaginary high ground that allowed its members to look down on others. Either way I didn't want to be there.
This wound up changing when I found a church that seemed to have a greater reason to exist than complimenting or commiserating with its members. You see, quite by accident, I found a church, Hobson United Methodist Church in Nashville Tennessee, that existed for more than this. It exists because people exist that are hurt and left out and disenfranchised for any number of reasons. I didn't know that this place would renew my faith, I didn't know that this place would welcome me, and I certainly didn't know that this place would open my eyes to the world around wider than they had ever been opened before, but it did, and I am very thankful for it.
Hobson is an unusual church, it is a multi-racial church though most of the members are African American. It promotes a theology called "Black Theology" that looks at the words of Jesus Christ and sees not only teachings about salvation and forgiveness but also profound lessons about and a call for justice. It sees all of us as imperfect people, equal in our imperfections but also equally worthy of love. Black theology reaches beyond the selfish reasons many people believe, their quest for personal salvation, and sees that all of us are sinners and that none deserve salvation, so we are, in all ways possible, equal. We can not condemn others unless we are blind to our own faults and shortcomings. We can not see ourselves as superior to anyone else unless we have bought into a lie. Black theology says that God loves us all equally and to deny this is an injustice that must be spoken against.
My church looked at me and didn't see a strange looking gay man, my church looked at me and saw me, George, a man trying to live my life as honestly as I can. One Sunday we had two women preach about a story in the Bible where a man prayed to God to let him win a battle against his enemy and if God let him do this he would return home and sacrifice the first person to greet him. This person turned out to be the man's own daughter. Many preachers see this story and talk about how strong this man's faith was, the two women who preached that Sunday, two women in love with each other, told us there was a different way of seeing this story. They made us aware that what we read in the Bible represented what the men who had written down the story thought of it. They reminded us that this may have not been the way God wanted us to see it. You see a young girl lost her life in this story but she was never named, but God knew her name. At Hobson we know each other's names. You aren't the homeless man at Hobson, you are Victor. You aren't the divorced woman at Hobson, you are Pam. I wasn't the white guy or the gay guy at Hobson, I was George because none of us were different, we were just who we are and God loves us as who we are. We aren't qualified to second guess God and so we love each other as who we are because that's what Christ tells us to do.
Tonight I was reminded of why I am a Christian as I was searching through youtube looking for videos of one of my favorite musical groups, The Blind Boys of Alabama. This is a group of gospel singers that started out at a school for black, blind children in Alabama decades ago and that are still making amazing music. One of the videos I watched was the Blind Boys singing "If I had a Hammer". This is, of course, a well known folk song, but when the Blind Boys sing it there is no doubt that it is also a gospel song. When an elderly back, blind man stands in front of a crowd and sings about a hammer of justice and a hammer of freedom there is no doubt that you are hearing the gospel. Hobson taught me this and for this I am forever blessed. This is why I am a Christian, not because it will get me into heaven, although I hope it will, but because the entire world is just as deserving of heaven as I am and the entire world is as deserving of a decent life and justice while we are here on Earth. Christ didn't teach us to look down on or condemn anyone, he taught us that we are all equal and to do what we can to lift each other up. Christ's message was one of love for everyone and this is why I am a Christian.
If you are in the Nashville area I encourage you to pay a visit to Hobson United Methodist Church some Sunday, it doesn't matter who you are or what you wear, the only thing that matters is that you are ready to be loved and to love others. That's why we are all here in the first place.
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