It seems like everything encountered yesterday spoke to me concerning the human spirit. My one-on-one charge this year in Special-Ed was absent, but his vacancy didn’t permit my sucking up coffee in the cafeteria all day. Rather I was asked to help with another lad whose autistic character doesn’t lend itself to acts of aggression, but does demand it gets its own way. The home-front, as well, requires such freedom afforded unto him; and what that has produced, in my opinion, is tragedy. There is great potential quite evident, verbal ability to communicate, computer skills, an understanding of at least some basic elements for a foundation to learning; but, with no “restraint” allowed, his days amount to constant behavior problems, always into something he shouldn’t be, interrupting other work being attempted in the room.......
Last night, then, a segment on “Dateline” dealt with conditions in Serbia where parents of children born with physical or mental abnormalities are encouraged to abandon them unto the state and, as revealed, what that equated to was “life” in a deplorable, ill-kept agency back in the corner of nowhere. I didn’t watch it all. Just enough to mix with earlier views expressed in relation to McCain’s Vice-Presidential pick, Sarah Palin having “chosen” to raise a Down syndrome baby. I don’t recall the identity on Fox News who thus addressed the issue. Some representative of women’s rights who acknowledged her decision against abortion as hers to make, but also applauded the other side of the coin being an option for any mother who didn’t want to deal with the situation. Suffice it to say: when my head hit the pillow about eleven, it was filled with questions.......
For me, the mystery is not so much a matter of “at what point does a person become a person” as it is “is there more to me than just the flesh” and, if so, when did “I” begin to exist, am “I” accountable to more than just “me” for decisions I make. While it is, indeed, the unborn who are being exterminated, surely it is we who accomplish the task that must examine ourselves about the matter. If our substance is but an evolution of cells surviving within an environment, then it all comes down to circumstantial achievement and Forbes was right: “He who dies with the most toys wins”. If, however, a Creator programmed us from the beginning to possess both an inner soul and a spirit, then shouldn’t believers, as representatives of “Truth”, be extending unto others the reality of a reconnection with the One who designed us instead of just thumping our version of the Book?.......
Saturday, August 30, 2008
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2 comments:
Jim--- Just as there is much joy in a child being raised in love, there is also great sadness when the opposite is true. It is sad when a life is cut short, it is sad when a child born or unborn is unwanted, it is sad when women resort to unsafe procedures because safe alternatives are illegal, it is sad that this is another one of those places that few are willing to stand in the middle and work so there is less sadness. It is much more complicated than I'm right, your wrong. I sense that you were immersed in that when you wrote this.
Wayne: I believe in a "strait path" which I find to be the voice of God. In our Sunday school class yesterday we finished up the Book of Revelation and addressed for a few seconds the verse that warns against neither adding to nor taking away from the prophecy of the Book (Revelation or the whole Bible?). I asked how it was possible to add or take away from what we had already, within the class, acknowledged we didn't entirely understand, couldn't imagine. We like, as a people, to reduce it all to black and white, cementing it into our terms; but only He is Truth, only He is black and white, and all we really have is that connection restored unto us through Christ. Doesn't it all come down, then, to a stumble through the Bible, through our life? It's not so much how much we think we have figured out to hold others accountable for as it is how deeply we hunger to know that connection for ourselves in the next step.
Some criticize "sitting on the fence"-if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything-but all I know for sure is His reality and those things He has established and proven in the journey. The Bible clearly states "Thou shalt not kill"; and then we get into arguing if that means even as a matter of self-defense, protection of others, Roe vs Wade, etc. Christ said that we "kill" with our tongue. The whole "left/right" things is sad to me. I'd rather make an attempt, as human as I am, at finding His tug on my heart...
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