A personal reflection based on my morning reading . . .
Would I have risked my life, and the lives of my loved ones, to interrupt the beating and crucifixion that Jesus endured? Or would I have stood in the crowd and screamed, “crucify, crucify.”
Would I have had the courage, and the conviction, to have risked everything to join that small group of conspirators who sought to save the world from the fanaticism of Adolf Hitler? Or would I have exchanged my wardrobe for brown shirts and pants and joined in with the masses who chanted, “sieg heil!”
Would I have had the courage to have walked with Martin Luther King, Jr., down the streets of some southern city and into the squalid cell of an inner-city jail, or would I have wielded the baton that was used to beat so many of his followers?
You see, it is so easy, and so crystalline clear, to sit back after two millennia, or 80 years, or even 50 years, and so smugly and self-righteously condemn the sins of my forebears. But, in all honesty, what would I have done different?
Jesus was condemned by conservative, law and order, patriotic Jews. Hitler was adored by conservative, law and order, patriotic Germans. King and his followers were beaten, jailed, and in King’s case, assassinated by conservative, law and order, patriotic Americans.
The scary thing is, I consider myself to be a conservative, law and order, patriotic American.
Condemning others through the lens of a telescope is frighteningly easy.
Condemning the man staring back at me in the mirror is frighteningly difficult.
The thing is, God is not going to judge me based on my response to events that took place before I was born.
God is going to judge me based on my response to injustice and unrighteousness that is taking place right in front of my nose.
I pray God sees something worth saving . . .
