IT'S NOT FAIR

(Dealing With Evil In An Unjust World)

When my sister, Jean, and I argued as children, our mother stepped in to prevent blood shed.  She was successful every time except once. That was the time I teased baby Jean as she was crawling up the stairs, and she took a bite out of my leg.  

When mom settled our disputes, one of us would often cry out, “It's not fair.”  Although I have matured since my childhood years, I still cry out within myself, “It's not fair.”

It's not fair that my father was killed in an auto accident when I was four.   It's not fair that my mother was left in a strange town, grievously injured, with two little children who were also injured.  It's not fair that my second father died of a heart attack leaving my mother to raise my younger sister and brother as a single parent.  It's not fair that my sister's son drowned while on a camping trip just before his first year in college.  It's not fair that my younger sister died of cancer just a year ago.

It's not fair that an earthquake in Haiti on January 12, 2010 killed 316,000 people, injured another 300,000 and left 1,000,000 homeless.1  It's not fair that a tsunami generated in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004 released the energy of 23,000 Hiroshima type bombs and killed 283,000 people.2  It's not fair that hurricane Katrina battered the southeastern coast of the United States on August 29, 2005 with 125 mph winds that killed more than 1800 people and ravaged coastal towns in Mississippi and the city of New Orleans.  It's not fair that some of those people were flooded out again by Hurricane Isaac just this last week. 3

It's not fair that Hitler's Third Reich exterminated 6,000,000 Jews and 5,000,000 non-Jews.4  It's not fair that 21,000 people died in political violence under the Afrikaner Apartheid Government in South Africa.5  It's not fair that on December 2008,  a 100 day genocide orchestrated by the divide and conquer strategies of neocolonial powers, Germany, Belgium & France killed 800,000 Rwandans.6 It's not fair that the North American Indian population in the USA was reduced from an estimated 12 million in 1500 to barely 237,000 in 1900 as European settlers took over their land.7  It's not fair that militants flew passenger planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 killing nearly 3,000 people.8 It's not fair that people in positions of power precipitated an economic collapse in 2008 that cost many Americans their jobs and homes.9

It's not fair!  It's not fair!  

Yet it happens and continues to happen.  And we have to decide how can we live meaningful lives in a world rife with injustice.    

Our yearning for justice is as old as human civilization itself.  Hammurabi (1792-1750 B.C.E) established a universal code10 of justice that applied to all the citizens of his empire in Mesopotamia.  "An eye for an eye ..." is a paraphrase of Hammurabi's Code.  It's central precept is that the penalty must fit the crime.  This continues to be the governing principle in our present western judicial system. The prologue to the Code contains this phrase, “..then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi, the exalted prince, who feared God, to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak...”  Hammurabi's Code, like the codes of the tribes conquered by Hammurabi, continued to acknowledge that justice was ordained by the gods.

With the rise of monotheism in the Abrahmic religions, another set of rules for justice were said to have been transmitted directly from God to Moses in the Ten Commandments.  These rules were amplified in Judaism in the Torah (the first five books of the Bible), in Christianity by Jesus through the New (or Christian) Testament and in Islam by the Prophet Muhammed through the Quran.  In each of these traditions, as with the earlier Code of Hammurabi, people believed that they would be blessed or punished by God depending on whether they behaved or disobeyed the law.  

But here comes the rub.  Ancient societies began to observe that awful things happened to people who had not transgressed the rules of the gods.  They asked, “If there is justice in the world, why are the innocent allowed to suffer?”  A most striking example of this questioning is found in the Old Testament book of Job written between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE.11  The book tells the story of Job, "a perfect and an upright man," who is a pawn in an argument between God and the Adversary.  God allows the Adversary to visit terrible things on Job just to see if he will remain true to God.12
 
Archibald MacLeish, recognizing the horrors of our modern world, contemporized the story of Job in his 1958 play, 'J.B.' 13  The play opens with two failed actors, Mr. Zuss and Mr. Nickles, now circus vendors, standing near a side show stage in an empty circus tent. They decide that Mr. Zuss will play God and Mr. Nickles will play the Adversary, as they reenact the story of Job.  They conclude that Job, or J.B. will show up because  the world is a stage filled with Jobs who are suffering without cause.  

Mr.  Nickles puts it this way:14  
            Millions and millions of mankind
            Burned, crushed, broken, mutilated,
            Slaughtered, and for what? For thinking!
            For walking around the world in the wrong
            Skin, the wrong shaped noses, eyelids:
            Sleeping the wrong night in the wrong city –-
            London, Dresden, Hiroshima.

Mr. Nickles states the challenge of the drama in the following words:15
            If God is God He is not good,
            If God is Good He is no God;
            Take the even take the odd,
            I would not sleep here if I could . . .

Zuss and Nickles watch as J.B. appears on the sideshow stage with his family at Thanksgiving.  He is a wealthy business man with a loving wife, Sarah, and five wonderful children.  As the play unfolds, J.B. and Sarah endure the agony of losing their children through violent deaths.  Then, the entire city is devastated by an air attack, wiping out J.B.'s millions and leaving the afflicted protagonist asking piteously for reasons and praying for death.  J.B.'s suffering continues as his body is covered by puss filled boils.  Throughout this tragedy, J.B. insists that God is just.  Therefore, he, J.B., must have sinned against God to be punished so.

Finally, Sarah is at her wits end.16

Sarah: starting violently to her feet

    Has death no meaning?  Pain no meaning?

She points at J.B.'s body.

    Even these suppurating sores ---

    Have they no meaning to you?

J.B.:  from his heart's pain

    God will not punish without cause.

    God is just.

Sarah: hysterically    God is just!

    If God is just our slaughtered children

    Stank with sin, were rotten with it!

She controls herself with difficulty, turns toward him, reaches her arms out and lets them fall.

    Oh, my dear! my dear! my dear! my dear!

    Does God demand deception of us? ---

    Purchase His innocence by ours?

    Must we be guilty for Him? --- bear

    The burden of the world's malevolence

    For Him who made the world?

J.B.    He knows the guilt is mine.  He must know:

    Has He not punished it?  He knows its

    Name, its time, its face, its circumstance, …

Sarah:  fiercely

    And you?  Do you? You do not know it.

    Your  punishment is all you know.

She moves toward the door, stops, turns.

    I will not stay here if you lie ---

    Connive in your destruction, cringe to it:

    Not if you betray my children . . .

    I will not listen . . .

    They are dead and they were innocent:  I will not

    Let you sacrifice their deaths

    To make injustice justice and God good!

J.B.:      covering his face with his hands

    My heart beats.  I cannot answer it.

Sarah:    If you buy quiet with their innocence ---

    Theirs or yours ..    softly   

    I will not love you.

J.B.:     I have no choice but to be guilty.

Sarah:    her voice rising

    We have the choice to live or die,

    All of us...          curse God and die. ...

Sarah turns, runs soundlessly out of the circle of light, out the door.

It may be difficult for us post-moderns to appreciate the tragedy of J.B. because God, for many of us - if we can even conceive of this entity - has been relativized and spiritualized.  God is no longer imagined to be an all powerful and completely just being who controls history.  In addition, our news media confronts us daily with the suffering of innocents on such a horrific scale that the stories of individual J.B.s pass almost unnoticed.

Still we try to make sense of our world - to give meaning to our lives.  How does one live in a world where  there is no justice?  J.B.'s wife Sarah offers one response, “Curse God and die.”  There are many ways to curse our life force and die.  We can pull back from life and just watch it go by.  We can engage in excesses in food, drugs, sex, drink, work, family and consumer goods.  We can literally take our own lives by living carelessly without caring about ourselves or others.

In the midst of his misery, J.B. is visited by three friends who seek to comfort him with three approaches to addressing the timeless problem of evil.  

Bildad, the orator and grand historian, laughs when J.B. explains his plight.  He claims that the march of time and history is God.  Individual guilt or innocence doesn't matter.17

    J.B.:         The hand of God has touched me.  Look at me!
            Every hope I ever had,
            Every task I put my mind to,
            Every work I've ever done
            Annulled as though I had not done it. ...
            Love too has left me.
    Bildad:        Love!            a great guffaw
            What's love to Him?  One man's misery!
    J.B.:        If I am innocent . . .  ?
    Bildad:       Snort of jeering laughter   Innocent!  Innocent!
            Nations shall perish in their innocence.
            Classes shall perish in their innocence. …..
            God is History.  If you offend Him
            Will not History dispense with you?
            History has no time for innocence.
           all park bench orator        Screw your justice!
            History is justice ------ time …..
            Not for one man.  For humanity.
            One man's life won't measure on it. ….
            Justice for All!  Justice for everyone!
        Subsiding                On the way --- I doesn't matter.

Can you here echoes of Bildad in our present history?  Wars are promoted by arguing for the profit and glory of the nation.  Individuals don't count - soldiers or civilians.  American politics is managed by spin doctors who manipulate public attitudes to benefit the party.  Political candidates are  attacked and ridiculed for the sake of promoting the opposition candidate.  Governments spread outright lies for the sake of the nation.  History books are replete with tales of the rise and downfall of societies with little mention of the common folk who are affected.

Another friend, Eliphaz wearing the white coat of an intern councils J.B. telling him that we are governed by our circumstances.18

    J.B.:        Guilt matters.  Guilt must always matter.
            Unless guilt matters the whole world is
            Meaningless.  God too is nothing. ...
             Eliphaz has been fidgeting.  Now he breaks in like a professor in a seminar, poking a forefinger in the air.   
    Eliphaz:    Come!  Come! Come! Guilt is a
            Psychophenomenal situation ---- ...
            We have surmounted guilt.  ...
            Self has no will, cannot be guilty. …
            There is no guilt, my man.  We all are
            Victims of our guilt, not guilty. …..
            Our guilt is underneath the Sybil's
            Stone:  not known.
    J.B.:    violently            I'd rather suffer
            Every unspeakable suffering God sends,
            Knowing it was I that suffered,
            I that earned the need to suffer,
            I that acted, I that chose,
            Than wash my hands with yours in that
            Defiling innocence.  Can we be men
            And make an irresponsible ignorance
            Responsible for everything?  I will not
            Listen to you!
    Eliphaz:    schrugging            But you will.  You will.

We can hear Eliphaz in modern and rational theories about human nature.  These theories often turn humans into objects, who are studied by biological and social science.  The individual is subsumed in the group with statistical averages and macro theories or subdivided by micro surgical and submicroscopic optical investigations that separate us and our organs into their constituent parts – proteins, fats, carbohydrates, DNA.  

The human who lives, desires, makes choices and suffers consequences is lost. There is no guilt, no struggle for meaning or betterment, nor transgressions.

At this point Zophar, the priest, argues that guilt is the thing that separates humans from animals.19

    Zophar:    … Happy be the man whom God correcteth.
            He tastes his guilt.  His hope begins.
            He is in league with the stones in certainty.
    J.B.:    urgently, the words forced from him        My
            Sin!  Teach me my sin!  My wickedness! …
            Speak of the sin I must have sinned
            To suffer what you see me suffer.
    Zophar:    Do we need to name our sins
            To know the need to be forgiven?
            Repent my son!  Repent! …
    J.B.:        Yours is the cruelest comfort of them all,
            Making the Creator of the Universe
            The miscreator of mankind---
            A party to the crimes He punishes . . .
                Making my sin . . .           a horror . . .         a deformity . . .
    Zophar:   collapsing into his own voice
            If it were otherwise we could not bear it . . .
            Without the fault, without the Fall,
            We're madmen:  all of us are madmen . . .
            Without the Fall
            We're madmen all.

Once again we hear echoes of Zophar in contemporary society.  We hear it in the harsh exchanges between the religious right and left – over hot button issues like abortion, the death penalty, homosexuality and war.  We hear it in the demonizing of all who are different – homosexuals, Muslims, people from the other political party.
 
We assume sinfulness.  We identify it in others, refusing to see it in ourselves, even though we know it in our deep unconscious.  Or we live our lives with a deep sense of nameless guilt because we have not lived up to our ideals.

In all of this J.B. maintains his innocence.   Finally, we hear a Distant Voice in a rush of wind sounds.20

    J.B.:         God, my God, my God, answer me!
    Silence            His voice rises.
            I cry out of wrong but I am not heard …
            I cry aloud but there is no judgment.
       Violently    Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him . . .
       That ancient human cry.
            Oh, that I knew where I might find Him! ----
            That I might even come to His seat!
            I would order my cause before Him
            And fill my mouth with arguments.

       Out of the rushing sound, the Distant Voice; J.B. Cowers as he hears it.
    Distant Voice:    Who is this that darkeneth counsel
            By words without knowledge? …
            Shall he that contendeth with the Almighty instruct
            Him? . . . ...
            He that reproveth God, let him answer it!

    J.B.:        I know that thou canst do everything . . .  ...
            Therefore have I uttered that I understood not:
            Hear, I beseech thee, and I will speak . . .
            I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear . . .
            But now  . . .        His face is drawn in agony.
                    mine eye seeth thee!
       He bows his head.  His hands wring each other.
            I abhor myself . . .  and repent . . .

Nickles and Mr. Zuss now argue about what went on with J.B. in the play.21

    Nickles:    Well, that's that!
    Mr. Zuss:        That's . . . that!
    Nickles:    You don't look pleased.
    Mr. Zuss:        Should I!
    Nickles:                Well,
            You were right weren't you?
    Mr. Zuss:    too loud        Of course I was right. ....
    Nickles:    He misconceived the part entirely.
    Mr. Zuss:    Misconceived the world!  Buggered it!
    Nickles:    Giving in like that!  Whimpering! …
            You're right.     I'm wrong.  
                You win.      God always wins.
    Mr. Zuss:    Planets and Pleiades and eagles ----
            Screaming horses ---  scales of light ---
            The wonder and the mystery of the universe ----  ….
            God stood stooping there to show him! ….
            And what did Job do?
        Mr. Zuss has worked himself up into a dramatic fury equaling Nickles.
            Job . . . just . . . sat!
            Sat there!        Dumb!        Until it ended!
            Then! . . . you heard him!    Mr. Zuss chokes.
                        Then, he calmed me! ...
            Forgave me! . . .         for the world! . . .         for everything!
    Nickles:    Nonsense!  He repented, didn't he -----
    Mr. Zuss:            That's just it!
            He repented.          It was him ---
            Not the fear of God but him! ….
            . . . In spite of everything he'd suffered!
            In spite of all he'd lost and loved
            He understood and he forgave it! . . .
            . . . He'd heard of God and now he saw Him!
            Who's the judge in judgment there?
            Who plays the hero, God or him?
            Is God to be forgiven?
    Nickles:            Isn't he?
            Job was innocent, you may remember . . .
        a nasty singsong
            The perfect and the upright man! ….
    The platform lights go out.   Total darkness.
    Mr. Zuss:    Lights!  Lights!  That's not the end of it. ….
    Nickles:   in the darkness22
            Why isn't that the end?  It's over.
            Job has chosen how to choose.
            You've made your bow?  You want another? …..
    Mr. Zuss:    You know as well as I there's more . . .
            There's always one more scene no matter
            Who plays Job or how he plays it . . .
                God restores him at the end.
    Nickles:  a snort
            God restores us all.  That's normal.
            That's God's mercy to mankind . . .
            We never asked Him to be born . . .   
            We never chose the lives we die of . . .
            But God, if we have suffered patiently,
            Rewards us . . .         gives our dirty selves back.
    Mr. Zuss:    Gets all he ever had and more ---
            Much more. ….
    Nickles:    jeering
            Wife back!  Balls! He wouldn't touch her.
            He wouldn't take her with a glove! …..
            Planting the hopeful world again----
            He can't . . . he won't . . .  he wouldn't take her!
    Mr. Zuss:    He does though.
            Time and again . . .         Tim and again . . .
Mr. Zuss picks up his vending tray of balloons and walks off the stage.  Nickles starts to follow, looks back , sees J.B. Kneeling in his rubble, hesitates, crosses, squats behind him, his vendor's cap pushed back on his head, his tray on his knees.
    Nickles:      J.B.!23
    J.B.:        Let me alone.
    Nickles:    It's me.            J.B. shrugs
            I'm not the Father.  I'm the --- Friend.
            All I wanted was to help.
            Professional counsel you might call it . . .
            I wondered how you'd play the end.
    J.B.:        Who knows what the end is ever?
    Nickles:    I do.  You do.
            What's the worst thing you can think of?
    J.B.:        I have asked for death.  Begged for it.  Prayed for it.
    Nickles:    Then the worst thing can't be death.
            You know now.
    J.B.:            No.  You tell me.
    Nickles:    He gives it back to you.        All of it.
            Everything he took:
            Wife, health, children, everything. …..
            Tell me how you play the end.
            Any man as screwed as Job was! . . .
          violently
            Job won't take it.  Job won't touch it!
            Job will fling it back in God's face
            With half his guts to make it splatter.

How many of us, when we experience unwarranted suffering are tempted to ask, “Why me?  I haven't done anything to deserve this.”  “I don't know if I can go on.”

When I look at the mess of our political and economic systems, I'm tempted to say, “Throw all the bums out.”  “They are all crooks and thieves just interested in money, fame and power.”  “I want nothing to do with any of it.”

At other times, I'm tempted to despair saying, “It's all so big, so complex, so out of control.  There is nothing I can do to affect any of it.”  “There's no justice in the world.”  “It chews us up and spits us out.”  “What's the use of even trying.”

Nickles puts it more graphically when he says, “Job will fling it back in God's face with half his guts to make it splatter.”

The play continues.  J.B.'s attention is elsewhere even as Nickles continues to harasses him.24

    J.B.:        Listen! Do you hear?  There's someone . . .
         rising           Someone waiting at the door.      Who is it?    Is there someone here?
        There is no answer.  He goes on.  Reaches the door.
            Sarah!
        The light increases.  She is sitting on the sill, a broken twig in her hand.
    Sarah:        Look, Job:  the forsythia,
                The first few leaves . . .     not leaves though . . .         petals . . .
    J. B.:    roughly    Get up!
    Sarah:        Where shall I go?
    J.B.:                        Where you went!
        She does not answer.
        More gently.                Where?
    Sarah:        Among the ashes.
            All there is now of the town is ashes.
            Mountains of ashes.  Shattered glass. ….
            There is no sound there now ---     no wind sound---
            Nothing that could sound the wind ---
                        Only this.
        She looks at the twig in her hands.
                Among the ashes!
            I found it growing in the ashes,
            Gold as though it did not know . . .
        Her voice rises hysterically.
            I broke the branch to strip the leaves off ---
            Petals again! . . .
        She cradles it in her arms.
                    But they so clung to it!
    J.B.:        Curse God and die, you said to me.
    Sarah:        Yes.
        She looks up at him for the first time, then down again.
                You wanted justice, didn't you?
            There isn't any.  There's the world . . .
        She begins to rock on the doorsill, the little branch in her arms.
    J.B.:        Why did you leave me alone?
    Sarah:                        I love you.
            I couldn't help you any more.
            You wanted justice and there was none ----
            Only love.
    J.B.        He does not love.     He is.
    Sarah:        But we do.  That's the wonder.
    J.B.:        Yet you left me.
    Sarah:            Yes, I left you.
            I thought there was a way away . . .
            Water under the bridge opens
            Closing and the companion stars
            Still float there afterwards.  I thought the door
            Opened into closing water.
    J.B.:        Sarah!
        He drops on his knees beside her in the doorway, his arms around her.
    Sarah:                Oh I never could!
            Even the forsythia beside the
            Stair could stop me.
        They cling to each other.  Then she rises, drawing him up, peering at the darkness inside the door.
    J.B.:                It's too dark to see.
        She turns, pulls his head down between her hands and kisses him.
    Sarah:        Then blow on the coal of the heart, my darling. ….
            The candles in churches are out.
            The lights have gone out in the sky.
            Blow on the coal of the heart
            And we'll see by and by . . .
        J.B. joins her standing
                            We'll see where we are.
        The wit won't burn and the wet soul moulders
        Blow on the coal of the heart and we'll know . . .
        We'll know . . .

The play ends with J.B. and Sarah rearranging and straightening the chairs in their home.  Like Sarah and J.B., we too are left living our daily lives, just trying to make sense of the senselessness and injustice of our world.

J.B. begins to understand God in a different way.  He says to God, “I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear.... But now....” His face drawn in agony.  “Mine eye seeth thee!”  We post-moderns see behind the veil.  Old institutions, religious and secular, seem to have lost their effectiveness.  This is not something we can fix.  Sarah puts it well, “The candles in churches are out.  The lights have gone out in the sky.”

Yet we frail humans, are more than we think we are.  We cannot behave as the Nickles in us would have us behave.  We cannot reject the world because of its lack of justice, “flinging the creation back into God's face with half our guts to make it splatter.”  Somehow, somewhere, we are gripped by love.   


Sarah says to J.B.,     I love you.  

    I couldn't help you any more.

    You wanted justice and there was none ----

    Only love.”   

J.B. responds,         He does not love.

     He is.

Sarah replies,         But we do.
            That's the wonder.

The creation often seems an uncaring place, devoid of love. Yet we are moved by something deep inside – a hope – a yearning.   We humans are becoming aware of our own consciousness, of new depths in the cosmos, and of a soul force that flows through it all.  This is all inexplicable.  We can't control it.  Yet we can nurture it in ourselves.  Perhaps this is where our hope lies.

Again Sarah says it best,
            ..blow on the coal of the heart, my darling. ….
            The candles in churches are out.
            The lights have gone out in the sky.
            Blow on the coal of the heart
            And we'll see by and by . . .

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake
2. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/12/1227_041226_tsunami.html
3. http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/katrina/facts/facts.html; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/03/hurricane-isaac-utilities-louisiana-mississippi_n_1852480.html
4. http://motlc.wiesenthal.com/site/pp.asp?c=gvKVLcMVIuG&b=394663#3
5. http://www.topix.com/forum/world/south-africa/TTAN0QGPFJ9O3M667
6. http://www.ppu.org.uk/genocide/g_rwanda.html
7. Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide? By Guenter Lewy - http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html
8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
9. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_big_idea/2010/01/what_caused_the_economic_crisis.html
10. http://www.ushistory.org/civ/4c.asp
11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Job#Origin_and_textual_history
12. An even earlier example of this questioning of god (Marduke) is found in an ancient Sumerian/Babylonian poem,  “The Righteous Sufferer” written in the second millennium BCE. (http://history-world.org/poem_of_the_righteous_sufferer.htm)
13. J.B. by Archibald MacLeish, Houghton-Mifflin
14. ibid. (p. 12)
15. ibid. (p. 14)
16. ibid. (p. 108ff)
17. ibid. (p. 119ff)
18. ibid. (p. 121ff)
19. ibid. (p. 124ff)
20. ibid. (p. 127ff)
21. ibid. (p. 133ff)
22. ibid. (p. 141ff)
23. ibid. (p. 144ff)
24. ibid. (p. 147ff)

My America

The Fourth of July has passed. For me it was a bittersweet time filled with gratitude and sadness. I am grateful to live in the United States with the freedoms, history and opportunities that I enjoy. Yet part of me is saddened by our present state of affairs.

We shout, “We are number one,” but statistics no longer bear this out.

1. Of 65 developed nations, the U.S. ranking in education is:¹
   1. 14^th in reading skills
   2. 25^th in Math skills
   3. 17^th in Science skills
2. The US ranking in health is:
   1. 29^th in infant mortality @ 6.8 infant deaths per 1000 live births.²
   2. 37^th in the performance of our Health Care System³.
3. Of the wealthiest nations, the US:
   1. Has the 2^nd highest child poverty rate @ 23.1% of 35 developed countries⁴
4. According to the Corruption perception index (CPI), the US:
   1. Ranks as the 24^th least corrupt nation in the world at 71%. (New Zealand ranks 1^st @ 93%).⁵

The inscription on the base of the statue of Liberty, our beacon of freedom to the rest of the world, reads:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses, yearning to breath free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door. 

 

The history of the United States is a unique experiment in democracy. We have been a melting pot, attracting many kinds of people with different gifts, all who desire the opportunity to better themselves by contributing to our society. This diversity has produced a powerful engine of creativity that has made us the envy of the rest of the world.

Yet today we seem to be intent on throttling down this engine by keeping immigrants out. States are passing laws that handicap them. We have literally built a wall on our southern border to keep immigrants from entering our country. We often treat them with suspicion. We are fearful of those who are different.

This fear of difference applies even to our own citizens. Our political system is corrupted by fear. We are more interested in damning our opposition than we are in developing solutions to our many problems. This was demonstrated dramatically for me last week as I read the threads on the Facebook pages of my friends.

One, a person more conservative than I, posted a statement critical of the Supreme Court decision which upheld much of President Obama's health care reform package. All the comments but one, which followed this post, derided the decision as well as the character of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who cast the deciding vote upholding the decision. There was virtually no discussion of the provisions of the bill, and there was no concern expressed for the people who were being affected by it.

I was about to add a comment myself, criticizing these respondents, when I realized that the tone of this page was no different from that of Facebook pages of some of my more liberal friends. Their pages too, were filled with comments that ridiculed the faults of conservatives whom they despised. Again there were few comments on the content or of the people affected by the issues being discussed. In both cases, commentators assumed that their political positions were totally correct, and the agreement of like-minded contributors re-enforced this bias.

How on earth are we going to address the enormous problems facing our society if all our of energy is poured into criticism and ridicule? Besides being disingenuous, this approach is lazy. It is always easier to criticize someone else's plan than it is to come up with a positive one of your own.

Last week, physicists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the CERN laboratory in Geneva announced that they had found evidence of the Higgs Boson (or God particle) predicted by the Standard Model⁷ in theoretical physics. This experimental evidence will lead to greater insights into the processes which occurred in the big bang, the moment of the creation of our cosmos. It may also prove helpful in the exploration of the enigmatic dark matter and dark energy⁸. This result was made possible because a group of nations invested billions of dollars in building the LHC and because an international group of physicists committed thousands of hours in theoretical and experimental investigations over the last several decades.

These people spent years proposing, rejecting and refining their insights regarding the moment of birth of our cosmos. They disagreed and competed with one another in the process. But they were unified in their goal to press deeper into the mystery of our existence. If some scientists involved in this effort had stooped to the level of ridicule that we see in our political system, they would have been ostracized by the majority of scientists in the field. The only thing that counts in the scientific endeavor is theoretical predictions that are substantiated by reproducible experimental results. It is this process of commitment to a goal over decades that has produced the amazing Higgs boson results. This discovery may have opened a whole new era in the study of the origin of our cosmos.

Now, I acknowledge that the issues facing humankind are messier than those facing physicists; but they are also orders of magnitude more important for the survival of our species. It doesn't take a genius to know that the explosion of our global population is straining the limits of the earth to support us. We are facing the real possibility that future wars will be fought over scarce water resources. More and more plant and animal species are becoming extinct. We have no idea how these species might serve as resources for our future survival.

The increasing gap between the educational levels of rich and poor children in our society and the relatively lower educational aptitude of all our children spells trouble for the US as we compete in a complex global arena. Although we may argue about the cause of global warming, it is becoming abundantly clear that this increase in the ambient temperature of our planet has disastrous implications for the survival of life. Yet we ignore the warning symptoms of the collapse of our ecosystem choosing instead to argue about our perceived differences.

We are presently in the grips of a global economic recession that has forced middle-class people out of their homes and jobs while the desperately poor in our world are threatened with fates that are almost impossible to imagine. Much of this disaster was triggered by greedy people who turned our banking structures into a carnival side show where the few benefitted by cheating the many.

It should also be clear that these same greedy people are “gaming” our political system? They have hijacked the Republican party. They manipulate us through fear and cause us to adopt policies that are not in the best interests of our nation or of our world? These charlatans are neither Republican nor Democrat, liberal nor conservative. They would have hijacked the Democrat party in the same way if it were in their best interest to do so.

Yet all is not gloom and doom as we celebrate the birthday of our our nation. I remember the grand visions of the founders of this country, visions which are manifest in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the words inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. These proclamations profess a faith in the potential of humans to be more than we think we are. They are indeed soulful and soul filled declarations.

How can we re-embrace the spirit of our forebearers even as we acknowledge the serious nature of our present condition? It is clear that we cannot continue to gratify our infantile urges to demonize those with whom we disagree. We must engage those who differ with us, acknowledging that we need all the human resources and viewpoints possible to address the horrendous problems we face.

Simply electing Barack Obama or Mitt Romney for president is not sufficient to address these issues. Our political system has become little more than a power game where people in Washington spend most of their time preparing for the next election and little time on working together to improve the life of the majority of our population. Our political system lacks soul, and only “we the people” can provide this soul.

If you are a member of one of the major faith traditions, consider what is asked of you by Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, the Hebrew prophets and other spiritual leaders. These leaders did not attracted followers because of their religious theories or by self aggrandizement. People followed them because their lives demonstrated characteristics that were ascribed to God. Almost universally, they asked their followers to act with love and compassion toward those who are suffering. If we are to live with soul, it's not what we believe that makes the difference. This is where we get bound up in petty disagreements that further divide us. It's about how we live.

Our power as a nation, as a people, will not come solely from our ability to elect a particular person for a political office. It will not come from our military or economic domination of world affairs.

If we are really going to honor the spirit in which this nation was founded, we need to re-imagine our beginnings. We need to ask what really brings life to our world. We need to explore with others, particularly those who differ from ourselves, that which is life giving to each of us. We need to tell our political leaders, as well as the charlatans who seek to manipulate us, that we are tired of their games. We need to live with soul.

This will not “solve” our issues any more than the physics experiment at CERN solved the issue of our existence. Yet as we bring our whole selves into living each moment with love and compassion, things will change, just a little bit. For me, this possibility is reason enough to celebrate the birth of our nation.

Robin Meyers⁸ puts it well: “Our power will come .... from one simple, nonnegotiable, radical idea: the power of love is ultimately greater than the love of power.”

1. US ranking in education by OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) of 65 nations on a scale from reported by the Guardian on December 7, 2010: <http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/dec/07/world-education-rankings-maths-science-reading#data> 
2. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db09.htm
3. New England Journal of Medicine - <http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp0910064> (The conceptual framework underlying the rankings proposed that health systems should be assessed by comparing the extent to which investments in public health and medical care were contributing to critical social objectives: improving health, reducing health disparities, protecting households from impoverishment due to medical expenses, and providing responsive services that respect the dignity of patients.)
4. http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/05/29/US-Second-highest-child-poverty-level/UPI-67641338349787/ - UNICEF study & The Opportunity Gap by David Brooks, NYTimes, July 10, 2012
5. http://cpi.transparency.org/cpi2011/results/
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model
7. http://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy/
8. The Underground Church by Robin Meyers, p. 175