It was about 10:00 p.m on August 3, 1492
when the ship’s Captain sighted land. The fearful Spanish crewmen, threatening
mutiny, guided their tiny ship into the warm Caribbean waters. Sea monsters
allegedly roamed the depths and the crew feared the potential disaster of sailing
off the edge of their flat world. By the time the Captain turned his ship
homeward, Ferdinand Columbus returned to a hero’s welcome in Spain, credited
with discovering a New World.
The second trip went better. This time
Columbus shipped five loads of Indians home for sale. Spain had a long legacy
of slavery.
Cabot left England and planted the
British flag near Labrador in 1497. In 1501, Vespucci announced Portugal’s
claims over their new territories. Cortez sacked Montezuma‘s Aztec Empire in
1519. Pizarro overran Peru, taking control of the silver mines. Envisioning his illusions of grandeur, the
Pope pompously granted Spain all lands west of an imaginary line three hundred
and seventy leagues west of the Azores. Elsewhere, Britain claimed all of North
America.
Life came cheap in this culture of
violence and conquest. Torquemada’s Inquisition eliminated wealthy Spanish Jews
and Jewish converts to Christianity. Violent conquest left other new conquests
in ruin.
In 1533, Gomara reported that deaths
from enforced labor wiped out more than 20,000 Cuban Natives. Although minority
voices called for gentler treatment of the natives, some historians conclude
that the object of the European nations “was wealth, both in gold and slaves;
and the idealist’s vision was submerged under a flood of conquest.
11 Clement Wood, A Complete History of the United States.
Washington, D. C.: Pathfinder Publishing Company, 1936, chapters 1-2).
Washington, D. C.: Pathfinder Publishing Company, 1936, chapters 1-2).
Conquest and violence ruled the day,
leaving the smoke of greed, gold, and gore spiraling heavenward, causing
settlers in the thirteen colonies to rise up in rebellion. The birthing of the
United States brought a breath of fresh air to the Colonialists, but not so for
that first cargo of African slaves that arrived in America in 1619.
Democracy--human freedom and civil rights--characterized an ascending United States. Yet, slave-power quickly powered agricultural productivity for King Cotton. White Americans staggered beneath the burden of this cultural mindset for the next two and a half centuries. Gradually the colonists caught up with, and surpassed, those who stayed in power by right of divine right and other fascist inequities.
In spite of this, America led the world
through an unprecedented machine age--eventually, a space age. Democratic principles, considered liberal for
their resistance to the status quo introduced our current information age,
sustained through technological superiority. In spite of this progress, America
still leads the world in greed, gold, and gore.
Today we find ourselves a culture where
violence is at epidemic level. It was not so long ago that a professional
hockey player clothes-lined an opponent, flattening him with a
potentially-lethal stick-block to the throat. For that, he received a 25-game
suspension, yet was not barred for life. We could but conclude that this sport was
more about winning and making money than entertaining.
Meanwhile, security cameras captured
film images of a male bandit concerned more with money than morality. A stunned
public watched images of a man mugging a 101-year-old female victim--for $33.
Elsewhere, an 80-plus senior lost $32--assaulted by someone that believed more
in profit than people.
In some neighborhoods today,
gang-members drive high-powered cars through powerless neighborhoods shooting
innocent victims with high-powered guns. At the pinnacle of our political
system, a President compromised our nation’s future by using a preemptive
strike to launch the Iraq war at an estimated cost of $2 trillion. Our current President
denigrates minorities and various ethnics while chanting “America First” and
ripping families apart while deporting parents that escaped to America
illegally in their flight for their lives.
Critics claim the amount of money spent
warring in Iraq would have stabilized Social Security for seventy-five years,
or provided health insurance to “every American” for a full decade. Such tax
dollars would take huge bites out of hunger if applied to water-starved regions
of Africa. Feeling the challenge of this violence, Bishop Lowell O. Erdahl prayed
this prayer of confession:
Captured
by our culture and worshipping its false gods, we forget that we
are
called in Christ to love and to be vulnerable. Trusting in ’saviors’ of
human
creation, we abandon the security of God’s grace and even
become
willing to sacrifice ourselves and our children on the altars of
these
false gods. Christ sacrificed himself rather than use violence. He
did
not sacrifice himself in using violence”
(Lutheran Peace Fellowship Notes).
Choosing freedom over slavery, as any
freedom lover would do, Campbell assumed a Christ-centered focus - “not. . .of
a politician, an economist, [or] a mere moralist, but that of a Christian.”
Christians, concluded Campbell, “can never be reformers in any system which
uses violence, recommends or expects it,”
William Herbert
Hanna, Biography of Thomas Campbell
Advocate
of Christian Union.
Joplin, MO: College Press, p. 189.
Jesus left us his model for choosing between peaceful co-existence, with non-violence and mutual respect; or hostility, with violence and disintegration. He left us free to choose the path we will walk and we can reap the rewards of peace and non-violence or pay the price of violence and disintegration.
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