All men are created equal

It's a lie. It's not true...at least not in the grander scheme of things.

Sure we are all politically equal (for do you think someone born - e.g. - without legs feels ontologically equal to someone fully equipped?)...well, at least at birth (but certainly not before birth). And the minute we start interacting with the world we begin the process of determining whether we retain political equality - not to mention ontological equality. Commit a crime and watch some of your political rights be taken away...and rightly so.

But our culture today seems bent on believing that "ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL AND FOREVER REMAIN SO." Furthermore this ultimately translates into a need for us to deny the existance of any hierarchy, moral or otherwise. And this is nonsense.

These blogging thoughts arise from a discussion I had with my Godson about the crazy things going on in New Orleans (Christ have mercy on them!) such as shooting one's sister over a bag of ice. The PC police are making it clear that we dare not judge people who are looting TV's or committing other crimes because we simply do not understand the extenuating circumstances of poverty and oppression and racism combined with an unfathomable disaster. The implication being that if I were in the same situation I might also loot a TV, and come to think of it I am pretty sure I could get a BITCHIN Plasma TV into my driftboat.

The assumption, as my beloved atheist often likes to make, is that we are utter slaves to our genetic predisposition. Christianize this and we come up with: we are all equally sinners. I cannot say this more clearly: This notion is a steaming pile of fecal matter! Yes we are all sinners...but...

To my Orthodox friends may I ask (and please forgive the potential irreverence here in advance): Would the Theotokos loot a TV? Would St. Seraphim of Sarov kill his sister for a bag of ice? Would St. John Chrysostom score a new set of golfclubs after breaking in to the flooded Big 5? Of course not, these Holy people are holy precisely because they have overcome the passions and are we not seeking to do the same? To my non-Orthodox friends I would simply ask: If we cannot ever hope to better ourselves OR if our better behavior is simply a product of our genes or our environment then why on earth do we bother TRYING to live the beatitudes and the commandments? Do we not struggle to love our neighbors? If the popular sentiment (ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL, which is read: ESSENTIALLY THE SAME) is correct then I contend we are wasting our time and we ought to give up trying to "run the race" (Heck ,what does St. Paul know anyway!)

And I'm not saying that we have a right to sit in judgment of looters, but by the same token let us not allow our recognition of our own moral failings become a shoulder shrugging excuse to refuse to call black black and white white.

The need for everyone to be equal is a big hinderance to many Protestants who examine Orthodoxy...precisely because protestantism borrowed much of its underlying thinking from the then blossoming philosophy of enlightenment. But, just because we WANT everyone to be pretty much equal doesn't mean that reality bears this out. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Jesus definately quantified sin for as you may recall he said that the Jews who handed him over committed the greater sin than Pilate.

Of course, GOD does the calculations, not us. In my own experience I have recognized that there are definately people who DO this thing we call Christianity MUCH better than I do and I am sure if we are honest we can all say this. We Orthodox endow such people with the title of "Saint"...part of the "All-Star" team if you will.

We are not equal...we are not the same...except in the context of God's love. But it is up to us to fully surrender to His love...and therein lies the struggle that we all engage in to different degrees...


...certainly to MY peril.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Someone at work pointed out (and I saw the same thing on the news):

When the news camera was hovering over a store with white people in it and they were taking things from the shelves: the camera crew said: "And look at these people here cleaning up their store..."

Then a few minutes later it was black folks in a store taking things from their shelves, and they said "And tonight we are seeing horrifying images of looting".

I kid you not. I saw this with my own eyes on the news.

My coworker saw a similar thing on a web site: photo of white people taking food, and the caption was: "People are taking what they need to survive." Photo of black folks doing the same exact thing: "Looting and pilliaging."

Cheers!
Basil
fdj said…
I find it REALLY hard to believe that the highly PC sensitive media would make such a blunder.

Over at KOMOTV, what's-his-bucket commentator talks about this and even shows the pics and captions you note. I have my doubts about it. Check it out....I wonder if the reporter who took the pic had better knowledge of what was going on. On the surface it APPEARS to blatant racism....but come on...do you REALLY believe that this is the case, that it represents some gigantic freundian slip and that we are all racists at heart? Seriously...in the white

http://www.komotv.com/stories/38901.htm

Let me provide a possible explanation (that I think is equally plausible with the assumption that the reporters are revealing seedy racism): The white people were caught on camera with these supplies after leaving a local grocery store and let us assume that they were alone and so the reporter has no idea HOW they got it - does the reporter assume looting? maybe, maybe not. Now, the black individual may have perhaps been a part of one of those HUGE crowds that were obviously looting the store... and therefore the reporter has no qualms in reporting it as looting. Now as a scientist I have to say that in order to diagnose Racism, these two pics would have HAD to have been taken at pretty much the same time and have involved the same store. In other words: the subjects were clearly doing the EXACT same thing and yet their behavior was labelled differently.

I wasn't there when either pic was taken and I certainly didn;t see what you saw Basil...But I think its rubish to believe that Shram is right and that the "media fuels the nation's racial imagery." I really doubt this, but I could be wrong.

Anyone here believe that black people loot whereas white people simple "borrow" what they need? I'm sure all the white people left money on the counter, right?

I was in the LA riots and it was some REALLY ugly stuff. And it was primarily racially motivated violence. But the Media handled it all with the biggest fluffiest non-race oriented glove...even while Reginald Denny was pulled from his truck and beaten over and over and over again while traffic helicopters recorded above LIVE for us all to watch on TV. Never was it mentioned that it was racially motivated.

I just don't think that secretly and perhaps even subconcsiously we are all members of the KKK and just don't know it. Especially the media - which despite the claims otherwise is very much left-leaning and "progressive"...the last sort of folks to accidently expose their racism.

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