graced's blog

As easy as it is for those of us who are white to look back and say, "That's a terrible statement," I grew up in a very segregated South, and I think that you have to cut some slack. And I'm going to be probably the only conservative in America who's going to say something like this, but I'm just telling you: We've got to cut some slack to people who grew up being called names, being told, "You have to sit in the balcony when you go to the movie. You have to go to the back door to go into the restaurant. And you can't sit out there with everyone else. There's a separate waiting room in the doctor's office. Here's where you sit on the bus." And you know what? Sometimes people do have a chip on their shoulder and resentment. And you have to just say, I probably would too. I probably would too. In fact, I may have had ... more of a chip on my shoulder had it been me.

- Mike Huckabee, offering his perspective on the preaching of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Source: MSNBC)

I greatly appreciate what the Reverend Governor Huckabee has to say about the recent furor over Senator Obama and, more specifically, what his former pastor Reverend Wright has said in the past. Too often the sling and arrows have come from those who most probably should hold their tongues because they cannot possibly understand the context from which Rev. Wright speaks.

The world is overcome not through destruction, but through reconciliation. Not ideals, nor programs, nor conscience, nor duty, nor responsibility, nor virtue, but only God's perfect love can encounter reality and overcome it. Nor is it some universal idea of love, but rather the love of God in Jesus Christ, a love genuinely lived, that does this.

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Meditations on the Cross

I am once again struck by the simple beauty and power of Bonhoeffer's words. We try so many things that do not work. War does not change much and so often makes matters worse. Social programs do much good, but often do not reach to the root of the problems effecting humanity. Nor do our dogged efforts, personal or institutional, the whole answer. Flailing harder at a problem will not make it go away.

For the Christian, the follower of Jesus, the answer always must be our Lord himself. As his love fills us and transforms us as Paul says, "from glory into glory", we find it easier to live out that love for others. Bonhoeffer often said that Jesus was, "the man for others." If Jesus is the ultimate man for others then we little Christs can be our own incomplete-imperfect-yet-on-the-journey image of Jesus in this world today.