A month or so ago as I was sitting in a Community Leaders meeting facilitated by our local school district; we were discussing numbers and statistics concerning how our children are graded and how those ranking dictate how the district is doing in educating the children in their charge. These rankings are very important because they can determine whether or not the district will lose control of a school to the state, which means it becomes no longer a community school, but a state run school. But more importantly to me it means that we are telling our children whom we love that once again they have failed. Toward the end of the meeting, someone stood up to share a statement that has been burning in my mind and heart every since I heard it. The statement was: “A child’s worth is not determined by their intellect.” I stand in agreement with the statement, it seems as though the smarter (intellectual capacity wise) our children are, the more resources and funding become available to them to help them become more productive adults, but children who struggle more due to not being as intellectual and whose circumstances of life make it very difficult for them to learn, seem to be punished or pushed to the background as not good enough, being told in essence that you are not worth the effort or resources that can help you over the circumstances of your life: their is no hope for you. I know this sounds overly dramatic, but we are talking about our children here, isn’t that important. It seems as though we are telling them that only the strong and intellectual will survive it you can’t cut the mustard you will simply be left behind. Has not history taught us the atrociousness of such thinking, have we become mad?
On October 23, 2012 as I was watching Morning Joe on MSNBC listening to a debate on the the morality of the use of drone missile attacks in the war on terror, I became physically ill as I heard one those arguing say: “The bottom line in the end is whose four-year-old gets killed?” Whose four year olds get killed, we send a drone aircraft to drop bombs on an area or building in order to kill sometimes just one really bad person and whoever else might happen to there as innocent as they might be (including children) and they are just chalked up as collateral damage. Innocent four year old children as collateral damage, it sickens me to think of this, are not children and and the other innocents more than collateral damage, are they not people like you and me, who are we to determine whose children are more worthy, I do agree with the commentator who said: “The Drone Program is going to cause the U.S problems in the future.”
I personally believe that it is part of a reality that already is true, part of of reality in our own country where in our education system this mentality already exist to a degree, we tell our own children (by our actions) that if you don’t stack up that is just to bad, we will support the ones who do. Are we not making these children who don’t stack up just collateral damage and in much the same way, we launch our rules and guidelines at them in a sterile environment away from the community’s where these children live, we don’t have to see their faces, we just want to see the results, those left behind are just collateral damage.
To me all children everywhere are more than just collateral damage, they are people who deserve to loved, who deserve to be given a chance to live life to it fullest, they are our future, all of them.
Have we gone mad?
“There is nothing greater than love. There is nothing more holy than love. There is nothing more true than love, nothing more real. So let us hand our lives over to love and seal the bond of love.” Eberhard Arnold
Love is what our children need, love is what all children need. They need not only to hear but see that they are loved. To our children: “You are worthy; you are loved.”
Today 1/8/13 I was exchanging posts on Twitter with a friend about the national debate on the NRA, and I remembered a blog I had written about children, our education system in Indiana and drone missiles back in October of 2012 which is italicized above. I got to thinking about the hypocrisy of it all and I was wondering if anyone else has noticed: that this same administration that condones the drone missile attacks that kill/have killed innocent people and children abroad is now seeking to restrict the sell of semi-automatic weapons because they killed our children here, don't get me wrong I am sickened by the tragedy at Newtown and I am very much for the banning of assault weapons here in the US, but I am also sickened by the killing of innocent children abroad. Either we are against the killing of innocent children or we are not, it should not make any difference what nationality they are.
The solution to the problem I believe lies not in the legislation (though it can help), but in the heart of man and no legislation can cure that, it is a job that only God can do; working through the lives of faithful people who truly care about each other.
The problem of hypocrisy pervades all aspects of society; faith included, and I believe where hypocrisy goes unchecked, chaos and evil can and will thrive in its environment.