Talking About the Issues 2007

So I've watched Oprah for the past 2 days...she is facilitating a dialogue in response to Don Imus' comments about the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team.  The comments were sexist and racist and demeaning.

I find myself frustrated by these conversations.  Debates over why this hatred exists, how it goes on, how far we've come, how far we have yet to go.  I hear over and over again people attempt to identify the most guilty culprit perpetuating these problems...and the finger points...at our history as a nation with slavery, at hip hop, at poverty,at corporate America, at men, at women, at young people, at old people, at neglect, at black people, at white people, at drugs, at the "streets", at MTV. 

We say, "Not me, it's not my fault...I am an innocent by-stander.  I am a product of a sick society.  I am part of a fatherless generation.  I am just the rapper, a pawn, the producers tell me what to say.  I am a producer trying to make honest music, the artists are ignorant and just expressing what they know, who am I to censor them.  I am a woman, no one will listen to me...I am oppressed."

A nation full of victims, who made themselves so. 

Victims cannot ever change things, for they themselves, by their own admission, are only changed by what happens TO them.
So afraid to say, "I am part of the problem.  I choose." 

People who realize they can set a course, they can change things.  People who realize they are able to respond and wake to the truth that they are not animals reacting to a stimulus, they can change things.  People who know who they are and where they came from, they can change things.

This is, at its root, a spiritual problem, a problem who's root is in each of our hearts.  If we are made in God's image, and we are...we have the potential to embody and administer justice, love, truth, hope, compassion... all of which God, is the essence.  But there's this problem of sin we have, this idea that we know better than God what's good for us.  When our pride refuses to acknowledge that all we know and have accomplished outside of Him is nothing at all, we seek and do not find, we ask with no answers.  We have debates over why this hatred exists, how it goes on, how far we've come, how far we have yet to go.  Because we choose it.  We choose "me" over God. 

Here's my challenge:  Be someome who chooses God more times than I choose myself on any given day, seek the Kingdom, know Jesus.  Be someone who puts others before myself, share the Truth.  Trust God.