This is Viewpoints for Wednesday, August 26, 2015
Who are the real illegals?
Donald Trump obviously knows few, if any, Latinos personally. But I have known dozens for decades. Some when I lived in Texas and Florida, and many here at St. Peter Claver Church in Macon. Almost all of them are hard-working people dedicated to providing for their families and their children. Mexicans and other Hispanics are just like “us,” desiring only a job and life in a free country to provide a better life for themselves and their families.
If many Latinos are undocumented (a person is not “illegal,” especially in God’s eyes, but an action may be illegal), I don’t really blame them for crossing a largely unguarded U.S. border. If I’m looking across the Rio Grande from Mexico, fleeing poverty and corrupt government and violent societies, I’m crossing to the “land of milk and honey”— who would not?
Oh, that’s illegal, you say. Well many of us regularly break laws like speed limits on highways, no-parking zones, no-smoking areas, and we cheat on tax returns, cheat in business, cut corners for sub-quality work, and, oh yeah, we regularly break those pesky Ten Commandments of God. So, undocumented immigrants are not the only law-breakers. Meanwhile, I have found most Latinos usually practice the values of honesty, integrity, hard work for low pay, and traditional family values that are so important in their culture and deteriorating in ours. We could learn a lot from immigrants about family.
Our inept government is to blame for not enforcing border security, and Congress has repeatedly dodged its responsibility to pass comprehensive immigration reform as asked for by Presidents Obama and George W. Bush and many before, and by citizens like me. Meanwhile, both Republicans and Democrats in business, particularly farm owners, profit from low-paid immigrant workers. I’m sure Trump profits greatly from all the low-paid labor in his hotels and other businesses while publicly demonizing them as if they were a cancer in our midst. (History shows how often a nation demonizes this or that minority, such as Nazi Germany condemning all Jews.)
It is said that Mexicans are merely taking back Texas, Arizona and California which white Americans took by illegal and immoral methods such as violence and force. I was born in McAllen, Texas, and I remember the Alamo for those who fought bravely there; but Sam Houston and Davy Crockett did not exactly get Texas “legally” like in a treaty or formal agreement with the Mexican government. American history includes too many “shady deals” whereby we took land from Native Americans and Mexicans.
Small-minded bigots like Trump show a petty, immature intolerance for non-whites, a racism and xenophobia more and more out of step with 21st-century America, moving inexorably forward as a more diverse society in which white folks will be less than 50 percent of the population. From his ivory tower, Trump thinks most Mexicans and Latinos are bad people, while we on the ground have found these our neighbors just the opposite. Of course they should come legally. Meanwhile, I blame my government for the unguarded border.
— David B. Conner
Macon
Christian distinction
Dr. Bill Cummings fails to draw any distinction between “authentic” Christianity, and the “Christian religion” (“Is Christianity dying in America?”). As the lowliest and least of lay Christians (I hope), I am uniquely qualified to attempt that clarification. The former is a regenerate state, entered into upon accepting that God became a man and willingly endured death in order to effect a new covenant, or testament, with the creature he created in his image — man. “For where there is a testament, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator” (Hebrews 9:16). Through faith in that man, Jesus Christ, and in his resurrection, we accept “God’s acceptance of us” and literally become a “new creation,” indwelt by his Holy Spirit.
That phenomenon is unique in all of human experience; indeed, in all of existence. And has nothing to do with rules, rites, or conditions of any kind— other than a sincerely contrite and repentant heart. As has been said, “Jesus Christ is the least religious person who ever lived.” Authentic Christianity is a relationship with him — with the creator of heaven and Earth. Those who are jointly related with him are also related to each other (“co-heirs”) in a “body” that has no boundaries whatsoever of race, gender, class, etc.
The “Christian religion” refers to the myriad man-made doctrines and dogmas, rituals and traditions that have accumulated over the centuries. Its roots go back to even before the establishment of Christianity as the enforced “state religion” during the late Roman Empire. Obviously, Christianity cannot be compulsory. Jesus Christ has never forced anybody to do anything. Just as obviously, one can practice the Christian religion without being a Christian, or follower of Christ, and vice versa. A careful study of Revelation chapters 2 and 3 — Jesus’ “Seven Letters to the Seven Churches”— is essential in discerning between the two.
— W. Wade Stooksberry II
Macon
This story was originally published August 25, 2015 at 10:32 PM with the headline "This is Viewpoints for Wednesday, August 26, 2015 ."