The following words seem especially fitting to our time and to the craziness lately gripping our country: “My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote, ‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’ What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.”
I am a registered Republican. The quotation above comes from the mind and mouth of a well-known Democrat. Regardless of political party, the words are both true and ever relevant.
A few years had passed since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Only a few hours had passed since the assassination of Martin Luther King. The year, 1968. The quotation is that of Senator Robert Kennedy, who spoke to soothe and salve a nation spinning out of control. The words speak for themselves and ring with a haunting relevance to our current state of affairs. His words are refreshingly nonpolitical and brim with something sadly lacking in these more modern times – statesmanship.
Robert Kennedy would himself be assassinated just two months later.
Kennedy referenced the Greek poet, Aeschylus, who had also once opined, “In war, the first casualty is truth.”
We are, as a nation, as a people, presently at war with ourselves, and true to form, truth is nowhere to be found. We have killed it. We have buried the body. And we have left it to rot in an unmarked grave, while we waste precious time and energy arguing over the corpse.
Words are plentiful but have come to mean next to nothing, with definitions constantly changing and follow-through seldom seen. Too many of us seem more interested in shifting and assigning blame than in actually dealing with our most pressing problems.
The time for bickering, finger-pointing, posturing and prevaricating has long-since passed. What we need now – desperately – is what our country needed then, in the dark spring and summer of 1968; we need “love, wisdom, and compassion towards one another.” In short, we need a good dose of God’s word.
“Love one another” (I John 4:7). “Be kind to one another” (Ephesians 4:32). “Let each of us please his neighbor for his good” (Romans 15:2). “Let each one of you speak truth to his neighbor” (Ephesians 4:25). Can you imagine how many of our world’s problems would be solved – in an instant – should such biblical admonitions be universally applied?
A better world begins with a better you and me.
Dalton Key