Subject: Compassion
Dr. Robin Meyers' Speech to students at OK University
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:
a.. 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.
b.. 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.
c.. 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.
d.. 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.
e.. 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.
f.. 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.
g.. 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.
h.. 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.
i.. 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.
j.. 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.
k.. 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.
l.. 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.
m.. 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.
n.. 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.
o.. 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.
p.. 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.
q.. 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.
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