Here\u2019s a mental exercise for a winter night.\u00a0 Think on this: Am I better than anyone else?<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t mean in skills.\u00a0 I learned long ago there are people better at baseball.\u00a0 That was followed by discovery that there are people better at singing, dancing, running, you name it.\u00a0 Even things I know a little, like writing, there are people much better, which is mildly frustrating.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t mean better in qualities like intelligence or beauty.\u00a0 We all exist somewhere on a range of those and can only play the cards we\u2019re dealt.\u00a0 I don\u2019t mean in wealth.\u00a0 We know that is an incomplete sum of ourselves.<\/p>\n
Am I better than anyone else?\u00a0 Am I superior to or more valuable than another?\u00a0 Hopefully our first instinct is, \u201cNo, of course not.\u201d\u00a0 It might come to mind that we are all equal under the law.\u00a0 Or that we are equal in the eyes of God.<\/p>\n
The Declaration of Independence announced to the world that, \u201cWe hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal\u2026endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.\u201d\u00a0 There are no words more central to our being a citizen of this country.<\/p>\n
Those words were a great leap forward in a time of kings and emperors.\u00a0 That government would be by the governed, and the governed were equal was radical stuff.\u00a0 Of course, we know that in 1776, the authors meant \u201call white men\u201d are created equal.\u00a0 Time would give the phrase deeper meaning.\u00a0 Women who were chattel, Africans who were slaves, and Natives who were considered savages all have come under the umbrella of \u201ccreated equal\u201d in the 244 years since.<\/p>\n
Deeper than civil declarations, those of us who are believers know that our worth comes from being children of a loving God.\u00a0 That precedes any manmade law.\u00a0 God had each of us in mind for eternity, which is boggling to comprehend.\u00a0 As Christians we believe in our hearts that God so loved us that He gave his son.\u00a0 All of us.<\/p>\n
So, notions of equality come from the founding documents and the Bible.\u00a0 Those are beautiful words.\u00a0 Equality is great.\u00a0 Now comes the hard work of living them.<\/p>\n
Those words were not rendered in some obvious situations.\u00a0 What was it like to own a slave?\u00a0 It seems a bizarre thought now, but people much like us in this same country did.\u00a0 Your slave was obviously not your equal.\u00a0 They were owned like one owns an animal.\u00a0 The slave owners were Christians which makes us cringe.\u00a0 They even used the Bible to justify slavery.<\/p>\n
People much like us marched Jews into gas chambers.\u00a0 Some of them were likely related to us here in Brown County.\u00a0 They had to see Jews as inferior, subhuman.\u00a0 Otherwise, how do you convince yourself in what you are doing?\u00a0 Again, most of them were Christians.<\/p>\n
Slavery and the Holocaust were long ago and far away.\u00a0 Easy to dismiss, right?\u00a0 Let\u2019s pull in a little closer to here and now.\u00a0 A few years ago, I spent a couple weeks in the South.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t take much scratching the surface to see divisions.\u00a0 I was vaguely aware of Jim Crow laws but have spent time since reading on that.<\/p>\n
After the Civil War, most whites conspired to make sure freed slaves wouldn\u2019t be granted all the benefits of liberty.\u00a0 In fact, few would come their way.\u00a0 They were forced to live in impoverished areas, attend poorly funded schools, work for less, and restricted from voting.\u00a0 It was easy to see Blacks as inferior even if they weren\u2019t slaves.<\/p>\n
Jim Crow followed Blacks to the North.\u00a0 Zoning laws, lending practices, and discriminatory hiring worked to suppress minorities across the country.\u00a0 Now Jim Crow-type laws are gone, at least on paper.\u00a0 I suppose things are better.\u00a0 Is racism gone?\u00a0 We wish.<\/p>\n
Racism, by definition, means that one thinks they are better than another.\u00a0 Because of skin color, birthplace, religion, or some other way we distinguish ourselves from another.\u00a0 I admit I grew up in a sheltered world where Lutherans and Methodists were the different people.\u00a0 In a way, it was easy for me to judge racism negatively.<\/p>\n
Our Midwestern, small-town world has changed.\u00a0 There are others here now.\u00a0 In Sleepy Eye, Hispanics have come to fill necessary positions with businesses in the area.\u00a0 As time passes, they buy homes, send their kids to school, and fold into the community.\u00a0 It is in the same way as every one of our ancestors.<\/p>\n
I have thought of racism as harbored in the dark recesses of our souls, and that we had to watch out where it seeped into our conscience.\u00a0 Recently in America, there are groups that don\u2019t even try to hide it.\u00a0 Fringe white nationalist groups have always existed in the shadows.\u00a0 Now they have rallies and Facebook pages.<\/p>\n
A while ago I was having a beer with a friend in town.\u00a0 A fellow came in and visited with us.\u00a0 He told us he left another place because there were \u201ctoo many f—— Mexicans.\u201d\u00a0 I didn\u2019t say anything.\u00a0 Later, in bed, I thought that I should have said something.\u00a0 Not for the unlikely chance of changing anyone\u2019s mind.\u00a0 More to show a shred of integrity to myself.<\/p>\n
We just commemorated Pro Life Sunday in our church.\u00a0 I support efforts to reduce and someday eliminate abortions.\u00a0 But I wonder if it\u2019s easy to value a baby we won\u2019t know.\u00a0 What about people who don\u2019t fit into our notion of humans of equal worth? \u00a0If our concern for babies doesn\u2019t flow to this side of the womb, it seems we dishonor and debase the pro-life movement.<\/p>\n
As clear as it is to me that a fetus deserves life, Jesus made this clear: \u201cTruly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.\u201d\u00a0 What about the refugees and asylum-seekers that our nation has turned its back in large numbers?\u00a0 They seem to be among the least, certainly the poorest and most vulnerable.<\/p>\n
Remember that it is just dumb luck that you and I were born in this place and time.\u00a0 But for the grace of God, we could have been born to a young, undernourished mother living in a shanty town on an eroding hillside in Honduras with no hope for the future.<\/p>\n
Or is it grace? \u00a0Jesus also says, \u201cIt is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0It may be that the path to Heaven is easier for that Honduran child than a well-off white person born in the most privileged time and place on Earth.<\/p>\n
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Here\u2019s a mental exercise for a winter night.\u00a0 Think on this: Am I better than anyone else? I don\u2019t mean in skills.\u00a0 I learned long ago there are people better at baseball.\u00a0 That was followed by discovery that there are people better at singing, dancing, running, you name it.\u00a0 Even things I know a little, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[162],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weeds-by-randy-krzmarzick"],"aioseo_notices":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-22 13:09:56","action":"change-status","newStatus":"trash","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117466"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":117484,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117466\/revisions\/117484"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sleepyeyeonline.com\/goodnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}