-----On: WHAT CAN THE GOVERNMENT DO NOW----Nearly 40 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said it best:
"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin to shift from a "thing-orientated society to a "person-orientated" society. When machines and computers, profit motives, and property rights are considered more important than people, the great triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. This call for a world wide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one's tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all mankind. We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the alter of retaliation. We have committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world, and I am going to continue to say it. And we will not stop it because of our pride and arrogance as a nation. A nation that year after year continues to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter."
Never before has it been possible to feed all the hungry children of the world. Yet, because there is national insecurity, our government is engaged in a mad arms race, spending billions of dollars wastefully on weapons of mass destruction (WMD), while millions of children are starving. And yet, just a fraction of what is expanded on the military budget would enable all of God's children to fill their stomachs. Our president has sprouted a weird concept of security and a warped sense of morality. WMD are sheltered like treasures while children are exposed to starvation. The nature of the evil lies in our cooperation! Money spent on WMD belong to the hungry children.
I wish to personally thank all the wonderful compassionate God loving people that welcomed us with God's love on our journey from Montana through Idaho, Nevada, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia. We could not have made it without God and God works through people. All people. Unfortunately, an air of religious intolerance permeates North America. Many Americans and I am told Canadians equate "Christians" with being kind, decent or good. This implies that non-Christians lack these qualities. Some who call themselves Christians reflect this prejudice. Yet, on this journey I found Christ is love, and in all His created! Praise the Lord. "God is love" (1 John 4:16). This does not contradict His holiness; instead, it compliments and magnifies it and gives it its deepest meaning. The person who does not love does not know God; even love for one's enemies! (Matt. 5:44). True Christians are not judgmental and unloving. They keep in mind that Scripture doesn't command them to go out and rail against false teachings; rather, it encourages them to offer biblical reasons with gentleness and respect (1 Pet. 3:15).
Using God's love for our foundation premise we conclude with what our government can do now:
From the ancient sages and mystics to modern political activists, the essential reality of peace has not changed. Love for our fellow human beings is superior to hatred and fear. Active nonviolence has been the method of our greatest peacemakers. Philosophers of vision have seen the need for unity of human beings so that differences can be settled by intelligent means. Human civilization is evolving steadily toward a reliance on the Wisdom of God.
What did Jesus say?
The sophistication of scientific technology applied as military force has created an inescapable crises for the human species which must be resolved. To survive, human beings must learn self restraint and less destructive means of resolving conflict. Not resisting evil with evil is the only way to eliminate evil altogether. It alone makes it possible to tear the evil out by the root, both out of one's own heart and out of the neighbor's heart. This doctrine forbids doing that by which evil is perpetuated and multiplied. He/She who attacks another and insults them, engenders in another the sentiment of hatred, the root of all evil. To offend another, because they offended us, for the spacious reason of removing an evil, means to repeat an evil deed, both against others and against ourselves. Therefore it is up to the people to recognize the danger to their lives and demand life-affirming policies from their leaders. Sanctification of all life: Creation endows all humans with dignity. Moses said that killing humans was wrong because "in the image of God has God made human kind" (Gen. 9:6). God created all human kind (Rev. 4:11). It is by the Grace of and for the Glory of God that we ride...
This is where every person has the opportunity and responsibility to influence the course of our civilization for the good of all. It does not take a great philosopher to realize that peace in the world would be for the good of all, while war benefits a few at the expense of many. Some individual government leaders are becoming aware of the true means of peace through active nonviolence. Yet many are still hypnotized by political leaders who use national pride and fear of terrorists to manipulate people for selfish interests.
Over fifty years ago a government leader in Germany said, "Terrorism is the best political weapon, for nothing drives people harder than the fear of sudden death." (As of today over 21,000 wounded U.S. soldiers have been treated at Landstuhl Medical Centre in Germany.) Fear and greed keep the children hungry. Fear weakens the nerves and distorts the judgment. It is not by fear that humankind must exorcise the demon of destruction and cruelty, but by motives more reasonable, more humane, and more heroic. Never before has it been possible to feed all the hungry children of the world. Feed the hungry children!
Now that North Korea has admitted that they have been "secretly" experimenting with nuclear weapons (If they had oil we would be poised on the brink of nuclear holocaust), we would be very naive to think that the others in the "axes of evil" don't have or will soon have nuclear weapons. The threat of nuclear war is to be taken seriously, but it will allow a breathing spell from answering evil with evil against the axes of evil so that better methods can be developed. War can break out suddenly, but peacemaking takes time, patience, education, and communication. And there is no communication, patience, and education when your children are dying of hunger. There are children in the world that are so hungry that God can't appear to them, except in the form of bread. The time has come for good people and the goodness in ALL people to rise up and demand that their government feed all the starving children of the world. Less than two percent of the national budget about 1.25% (10 billion dollars) would feed them all. Do the math: Eight million people die of hunger or hunger related causes every year, three-fourths of these are children under the age of five. They could all live on less than 2 dollars per day. Two times 365 days equals $730 per year.
Give them each $1000 spread over the year and let them "live it up." One thousand times eight million equals eight billion. The extra two billion would be enough to get the food to them if we didn't buy six hundred dollar toilet seats or five hundred dollar hammers. These hunger statistics were provided by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Currently one third of one percent of the national yearly budget goes to foreign aid (about 2 billion dollars), and much of that is for guns. Forty seven percent (now over 400 billion dollars) of the budget is spent on the military, and much of that is spent on weapons of mass destruction. No new money is needed to feed the children: your tax money is being used for WMD! Moneys spent on WMD belongs to the hungry children...
Riding on horseback, I rode by 54 nuclear reactors about 10 miles north east of Arco, ID. These nuclear reactors are not being used to make electricity, in fact many are actively making nuclear isotopes. The people I talked with are not proud of what they are doing. They fear that if they don't cooperate they will loose their job and won't be able to feed their children. The ground at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico is contaminated from testing. We were forced to follow the road and couldn't cut across the land as the crow flies like we often did in other areas on the journey. We stopped at a guard station to water the horses, and the guard showed us, on monitor, the largest laser in the world. I asked him, "what could the government use that for?" He said, "sure could kill a lot of people with the beam of that big baby." Our government was prepared to retaliate with nuclear weapons and WMD if Iraq had used the WMD that they did not have. Fear is not a basis for peace. What we ought to fear, especially we Americans, is not that terrorists may drop WMD on us but we may allow our government leaders, acting as our representatives, may use such weapons in our name. It is common knowledge that our government is shifting from disassembly to new assembly of nuclear weapons and biological weapons development all across the country. The nature of the evil lies in our cooperation with it. Before political leaders will give up their use of military methods to try to solve problems, enough people must be educated to understand better methods. We will never have peace on earth as long as we keep killing each other's children, but we will when we feed them!
In our hearts, this fundamental truth of love for all is felt even though none of our biological children will die of hunger. You, who are reading this, are probably more enlightened on these points than most. Those who truly realize that love and understanding are more effective than hatred and force are the people who will be changing the world for the better by communicating and educating others.
As Einstein clearly saw, what is needed is a chain reaction of awareness from person to person to person. You too have a dream: that age-old dream of saints and sages--the great commonwealth of the World as the visible embodiment of the brotherhood of human kind. Even the smallest person can change the course of the future! All things start small... If a present day prophet were to lead the masses to peace by way of God's love, they would speak as one human being to another. With the power of the law of love and the gentleness of the Gospel, they would speak thus: Patriotism is noble, insofar as it approaches that which is humane, but the very reverse the further it is removed there from. "We don't do body counts," as General Tommy Franks, a good man trained to lead men to kill or be killed performing his duty, put it. 100,000 Iraqi deaths in this war (although, this is on the scale of the death toll after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima), at the hands of US and coalition forces, are hardly news. (Our government rejects this research. Sure we can trust our government, just ask any Native American Indian).
The Bible commands obedience to the government (Rom. 13:1; Titus 3:1; 1 Peter 2:13), but civil disobedience is just when the government attempts to compel unrighteousness (Exodus 5; Dan. 3,6; Rev. 13). Creation endows humans with dignity. Worship and serve ONLY the Creator. Yet it is the created that manifests God's glory. No interests, however great, are higher than those common to all mankind. Among them, the foremost is the old commandment, as old as the oldest documents of any nation: Thou shall not kill! You are all of one blood. Love one another. People can. Nations can. All this is eminently possible because God's love transcends the limitations of human kind. The first essential component of social justice is adequate food for all humans. Food is the moral right of all who are born into this world. You can't love God and not feed the hungry children. Money spent on WMD belongs to the hungry children!
What did Jesus say?
A man (he professed to be a Muslim American) in California said, "You got it right Doc our government needs to do unto others as they would have them do unto us. AND DO IT FIRST!"
A woman in Arizona said, "In Christ we have the ultimate example of evil being overcome by good." Resist not evil. Do good to those who hate you.
In Ohio a teenaged girl said, "Ask the president what part of love he doesn't understand?" Love your enemies.
A lady in Maryland told me to tell George, "You can't love God and not feed the hungry children!" Feed the hungry children.
A man in Virginia said tell our president, " We will never have peace as long as we keep killing and torturing each others children, but we will when we feed the children." What so ever you do unto others you do unto me also. God speaks through the people...
"You have heard that it has been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say to you. That ye resist not evil. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your shirt, give him your overcoat as well. If someone forces you to go a mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one that ask you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. You have heard that it has been said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you love your enemies, bless them that curse you. Do good to them that hate you, and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matt. 5:38-48). "Lord when did we see you hungry and feed you,... I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me." Matt. 25: 37-40).
A true Christian can see the face of Jesus in the eyes of that little child in Iraq that just died of hunger. Did you hear the child? Just before the light in Her eyes went out; She said, "Forgive them Father for they know not what they have done." Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Her a question, testing Her, and saying. "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" Jesus said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all yor mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: You shall love others as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the Prophets." (Matt. 22:35-40) All humans are brothers. There is no attack in love!
Let us face squarely the historicity paradox that the nation which goes to war is a nation, usually, genuinely desiring peace. War is the outcome, not mainly of evil intentions, but on the whole, of good intentions which go astray or are frustrated. It is made, not usually by evil men knowing themselves to be wrong, but is the outcome of policies pursued by good men usually passionately convinced that they are right with God.
The nature of the evil lies in our cooperation with it.
Mr. President, Jesus loves you. And so do WE...
God's Love,
Doc Mishler
Across America on Horseback
The Answers You Gave Me
Doc Mishler
In 2002, Lawrence “Doc” Mishler, a former professor, mountain guide, and cancer survivor, sold his land and belongings and set out on horseback across the United States to call for an end to world hunger.
“Every single day twenty-five thousand children die of hunger and hunger-related illnesses,” he says. “Every four seconds the light in a child's eyes goes out. This is unacceptable. If we can spend $100 billion destroying people, we can spend $50 million to feed people.
“When I am asked why I ride, as I often am, I say I love riding and living deliberately because I too will die. But if you wish to help, please send your support to help feed one of those twenty-five thousand children.”
For two years and 5000 miles - from Montana to Washington, D.C., by way of California and Crawford, Texas - Mishler, his dog, and his two Tennessee Walkers averaged ten miles a day. He stopped wherever he found hospitality. “I had mapped it all out, but then I talk to people along the way and they always know a better way. Now I’ve put the maps away and just listen to the people."
And listen he has. Wherever his horse stopped, he asked people about some of Jesus’ most neglected teachings. What follows is Doc Mishler's summary of the excuses we gave.
Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I tell you not to resist an evil person” (Matt. 5:38-39). “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you” (Matt. 5:42). “Give the hungry food...” (Matt. 25:31-46)
On my journey by horseback from Montana to Washington, D.C., by way of California, I wondered how seriously we take the gospel of Jesus Christ after September 11, 2001. Or as my Jewish friends would say, “How seriously do we take that good Jewish boy Jesus.” The best way of concentrating on that question is, I think, to face the book of Matthew and ask: For whom is the Sermon on the Mount intended? To whom does it apply? What is the purpose of this sermon, and what is its relevance today? In your own words, what did Jesus say in Matthew 25:31-46?
Every Sunday for two years, over 5000 miles by the grace of the Great Spirit, I let my mare, Faith, take me to whatever church she walked to following my dog Czarbear or Gooddog and asked the above questions. I also handed out hundreds of papers with the questions on them whenever I stopped, asking people to respond by email. This article is a summation of your answers.
After asking these questions of the people, and clergy of different faiths and denominations, I find five typical criticisms of Jesus and active nonviolence.
First, some of us assert that state violence does not contradict Christ’s teachings, believing that government is not bound by Jesus’ commands about humility, forgiveness, and love of enemies. We simply quote Biblical passages to our liking and ignore the essence of the teachings. Somehow we forget that we the people are the government.
Second, we feel turning the other cheek and giving up one’s shirt is too high a moral demand for this world. If force were not used to stop evildoers they would destroy all the good people. However, this argument destroys the Christian teachings because true Christians do not wish to judge evildoers, nor do they consider themselves capable of judging accurately, nor would they be able to execute punishment.
We fear death because we have so little faith, and yet Jesus promises eternal life. By the grace of God, living each day come what may for over two years, I waited upon the Lord and prayed, “Go ahead, make my day.” And I found that where “Faith” walks in, fear runs away. Each day was a new adventure. My daily bowl overflowed and everything I needed was provided.
The third argument is that although one ought not defend oneself, one ought to defend one’s neighbors. This still contradicts Christ’s teachings; Jesus did not allow his disciples to defend him because the violence used to defend against threatened violence may be even worse, since we never know what will result beforehand. We can learn what Jesus would do by what he did when he had the superior power. Only God is omnipotent and he said resist not evil and feed the hungry. Jesus is the ultimate example of how good overcomes evil.
Fourth, theologians and defenders of the church and state consider violations of non-resistance as justifiable under certain circumstances - such as “just wars” (slaughters) declared or undeclared and executions - yet they do not try to justify the breaking of other commandments, such as those against fornication, adultery, or lust.
Many clergy claim, “Thou shall not kill means thou shall not murder.” They say suicide bombers and terrorists murder (unlawfully kill), whereas governments using military force kill lawfully. Everyone agrees that nations have a right to defend themselves. But contrast how Jesus, in the New Testament, admonishes his followers: “Whoever strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” And he urges them to “love your enemies.” Of course (as students of history know) in practice we Christians have widely ignored Jesus’ message. Ever since we obtained military power, we have enthusiastically slaughtered one another and “evildoers”.
One reason why many of us ignore non-resistance (active nonviolence) is because many preachers do not recognize it and even avoid preaching on the Sermon on the Mount. (To recognize active nonviolence might be considered unpatriotic, especially after 9/11, and definitely not economically profitable. I have seen membership decrease after preachers started preaching the Sermon on the Mount. Membership translates to money, and not necessarily a relationship with God. We cannot serve two masters.) Much of what passes for Christianity is a negation of the Sermon on the Mount.
The fifth and most used device was merely to ignore the questions and criticize active nonviolence for being one-sided or extreme. Those who ignore the questions are the hardest to reach because they are not willing to discuss the issue and assume they are right without any justification whatsoever, being under some kind of “hypnotic suggestion,” controlled by mob rule. The nature of the evil lies in our cooperation with the mob. We can choose to ignore the Holy Spirit but he will never leave us!
Jesus knew that many of us whom he expressed his love for would continue to ignore and reject his word. Oh, yes, we know all about the doctrine of grace and forgiveness, and we are looking to Christ. But here in these documents, which we claim to be authoritative, is this sermon. Where does it come in our scheme? The Sermon on the Mount is a description of what Christians, Jews, Muslims, and others (Jesus was speaking to all; God is all and in all) are meant to be. I found on this journey that, though sinners we are, we all believe we obey God’s word, even as our nation ignores Jesus’ message and repeats history.
We, the people, should all struggle and suffer in order to understand more fully and obey more perfectly the word of God as we extend our prayers, spiritual nurture, and material aid to each other in these difficult times. God wants to help through the people. We are weak and God is strong. All things are possible through the Lord. We can feed the hungry children of all, and realize that we will never have peace as long as we keep killing each other’s children.
The original teachings of Christ transcend the social conception of love, which may be limited to exclusive love of one’s family, church family, tribe, nation, race, or even humanity. These social brotherhoods are based on love of personality, but Christian love expands because it is based on the love of God.
After riding on horseback for over two years and listening to the people as they answered the questions I stated above, I find five ideals and commandments of Christ expressed in the book of Matthew outlined here as a precursor to future ridings and writings:
1) Have no ill-will against anyone, but love all. Don’t even offend with a word.
2) Feed the hungry.
3) Live only in the present and don’t worry about the future. Don’t swear and don’t promise.
4) Never use violence nor repay evil with evil, but suffer insult and give up possessions.
5) Love our enemies and those who hate us by treating them as ourselves.
