Goodwill to Men

What is goodwill? Can you hold it in your hand? Can you see it as you can see a tree growing in your yard? Can you feel it like a fine carpet under foot? Can you taste goodwill. Perhaps only in metaphor.
How is goodwill conveyed? How is it understood? Can you show goodwill to a lion or tiger and expect it to respond in kind? Goodwill is a human understanding, a common understanding, and that commonality, the fact that we can share what can not be quantified in material terms is the testament to what makes us human.

The topic of politics came up between myself and a respected member of our church; a black man. The origins and nature of the democrat party was the issue. Factual realities such as the racist nature of the democrat party founder, Andrew Jackson, the democrat party’s stand against civil rights, that Al Gore’s father filibustered the civil rights act, the Jim Crowe laws of the democrat south, the fact that Martin Luther King was a republican, that the respected senator Robert Byrd, a democrat, was the prominent leader of the KKK, that the KKK was born as the militant branch of the democrat party, that democrat party policies destroyed the black family, that they are leading a black genocide via Planned Parenthood, none of it was going to sway my brother in faith’s belief in what he believed to be the party for his people. …and I could have gone on.

My friends belief that somehow the democrats reformed and that the republican party, the party of Lincoln, converted, “switched places with the democrats”, to a platform of racist elitism bent on the destruction of the poor could not be changed. It is the way things are and I was incapable of understanding the reasons.

Am I incapable of understanding the plight of the black man? As a human speaking to a fellow human the term goodwill would convey something near identical to each of us. We even have the capability to express and admit to experiences and intentions we recognize as beyond our understanding. We say, unimaginable suffering, or indescribable destruction where even an image could never convey the devastating emotional toll upon the victims.  We speak of bitter sorrow to quantify the experience beyond the common.

So as one human to another, as one human to any other human, can one deny another’s empathy or compassion, judging the other incapable of any possible understanding? No. When you do, you strip away what makes us human from the relationship. There is no basis for a relationship. An irreconcilable divide will arise, if ever I were to discuss politics with my friend again, as it stands now.

I have not experienced what it is to grow up black, to live as a black man. But as a human, as a citizen that remembers the turmoil of the sixties as a small child, who witnessed the black pride of the seventies, the red lining of neighborhoods and the decline of the black family, along with the decline of the nation, as a responsible member of society, as one who, being human, cannot help but feel and distress over the fate of this nation and its people that includes all men, I am perfectly capable and qualified to enter into the national discussion on race or any other topic relevant to this nation. My opinions are perfectly valid in the human debate.

Here is what I can understand. The black man of today, anyone under forty, is incapable of understanding the suffering their ancestors experienced. Their difficulties can never compare to the hardships that have come before. I saw the neighborhoods to which blacks were confined when a was a child. My dad drove us through them. I have spoken to elderly black faithful on occasion in their homes. It doesn’t mean I comprehend their suffering completely, but I am certain capable of understanding that what young blacks experience today would not be called racism by those who have come before. Those before them would see limitless opportunity today. How could I possibly make that claim? you ask. I can make it because I am just as human as any other man or woman on God’s good earth.

When the race mongers and your black lives matter types declare any view but their own valid, when they declare only they can understand, that only they are qualified to comment, they are taking the humanity out of the discourse. And when our humanity is denied, when we deny man’s ability to transcend the material, there is no truth, there is no lie, no compassion, no empathy only survival of the fittest, struggle, turmoil and eternal strife.

It is this condition of turmoil, strife, suffering, and ignorance over our very surroundings, attributed to the fall of man in the Bible, that humanity has been struggling to overcome for thousands of years, if not hundreds of times longer. It was through aspiring to and submitting to the unseen and pursuing absolutes in the world around us that virtue and understanding advanced. Upon these qualities humanity could cooperate and unite around a common good, the natural world could be quantified, analyzed and put to work through our growing knowledge of science.

The United States at one time was the fruit, the crowning glory of the Christian world, of Christian history. It brought never before seen blessings, prosperity and peace to all men throughout the world.

Now warfare and bloodshed around the world are preferable to a supposed United State homogeny. The people’s of the world are being coaxed to surrender their wealth and futures in response to computer models that run contrary to the truth in the name of global warming and saving the earth. The traditional family is optional to the preferred practice of perversions mankind has been attempting to free itself from since the beginning. The unborn are disposable and the world would be better off without us.

And politics? The democrats put forth an incompetent and a criminal as their presidential candidate and have no doubt of her victory. The republicans are more concerned about the desires of the democrats and the press than of those who put them in office. The law applies to some but not to others. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

When skin color is all that matters, when what makes us human is denied, when there is no higher authority than oneself there will never be justice. There will never be peace. To deny the humanity of others is to deny your own humanity and all that it entails.

Peace on Earth Goodwill to Men.