"I’ve always tried to be fair, even-handed, not an advocate for any group.” Dan Rather, Journalist
March 27, 2013
By: Linda Case Gibbons
You’d be hard pressed to say Jesus Christ didn’t pay his fair share, and yet, as often happens with good guys, he didn’t get a fair shake.
Sad to say, not much has changed. The good guys still take it in the neck, so that Christ‘s agonized cry, "Eli, eli lama sabachthani? (My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?) is as pertinent today as it was when He died on a cross those many years ago.
There will always be Pontius Pilates. There will always be crowds crying "Crucify Him, crucify Him." And, lucky for us, there will always be good guys who gladly put their necks on the line.
Like the kid at Florida Atlantic University who was suspended because his professor, Deandre Poole, vice president of the Palm Beach Democratic Party, had students stomp on a paper with the word "Jesus.”
Why? Why, indeed. His classmates all complied, but the kid refused.
Like good guy Dr. Ben Carson who has spent a lifetime saving babies’ lives by using his pediatric neurosurgical skills, whose only mistake was being black and a conservative.
This left the door open so MSNBC’s self-styled, low-information liberal Toure Neblett could kick off the left’s expected "Uncle Tom-ing” of Carson, branding the doctor as the latest GOP "token" minority who was helping Republicans "assuage their guilt.”
Or like the dozens of Colorado sheriffs who oppose gun control bills in their state and said so and now have had their pay raises held up by lawmakers until they toe the line.
"The first word that comes to my mind,” El Paso County Colorado Sheriff Terry Maketa observed, "is extortion.
No soup for them.
But Toure Neblett will get to continue his ugly rants…
Egypt’s Morsi-led Muslim Brotherhood government will still receive 20 F-16 fighter jets from our president as part of a $1 billion foreign aid package…
America will still shell out $500 million to Palestine, even though Arab Muslims threw shoes and set fire to pictures of Obama during his recent trip to Israel, to protest America’s involvement in Palestinian-Israeli relations, shouting, "We want to tell America that we hate you and you have no place here…”
A California Alameda county administrator will still get her lifetime $423,000 in retirement benefits while California quietly goes broke…
And a columnist in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch will still get to publish his wacky ideas on trimming our national debt by cutting out funerals for veterans…
”Bear in mind,” he writes, "that most veterans did nothing heroic. They served and that’s laudable, but it hardly seems necessary to provide them all with military honors after they have died…Everybody knows government needs to cut costs. This is exactly how you do it. You identify things you don’t need and you cut them.”
Unequal, unfair? Maybe. But it isn’t the events that occur that are important, it is how one responds. So how do "the good guys” respond?
Ryan Rotela, the kid at Florida Atlantic University lived out his values as a religious Mormon and was promptly suspended for it. But he did it anyway.
"Anytime you stomp on something,” Rotela told a local CBS affiliate, "it shows that you believe that something has no value. So if you were to stomp on the word Jesus, it says that the word has no value.”
Another "good guy,” Florida Gov. Rick Scott agreed. He ordered an investigation of the school’s policies.
"I am deeply disappointed,” the governor wrote to Frank Brogan, chancellor of the state’s university system, "in the recent action of Florida Atlantic University faculty that raises significant questions over students’ rights and the lessons being taught in our classrooms."
"As we enter the week memorializing the events of Christ’s passion, this incident gave me great concern over the lessons we are teaching our students. The professor’s lesson was offensive and even intolerant to Christians and those of all faiths who deserve to be respected as Americans entitled to religious freedom.”
And for Dr. Ben Carson, well, the fight has only just begun for him. Why? Because he is a good guy and that scares the heck out of those who cannot quite figure him out, or maybe they do and that scares them even more. He stands for everything they’re not, for everything they fear.
"If you don’t have anything useful to say” Dr. Carson told FOX’s Megan Kelly, "then you attack people…If you feel that your house of cards has been discovered and is starting to come unraveled, you become very desperate
"You know, intelligent people tend to talk about the facts. They don’t sit around and call each other names. That’s what you can find on a third grade playground.”
Are comments aimed at you racially motivated, queried Kelly?
"Oh, there’s no question. They feel if you look a certain way then you have to stay on the plantation. I’ve heard some people refer to me as an Uncle Tom. Well, obviously they don’t know what an Uncle Tom is because they need to read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ You’ll see that he was very, very subservient, kind of a go along to get along type of person. Obviously that’s not what I’m doing.”
Obviously. Maybe the low-information Toure should do more reading and less talking than the more educated Dr. Carson at whom he is taking potshots.
The way the "good guys” respond becomes a talisman for the rest of us. Christ turned an instrument of cruel torture, the Cross, into a symbol of hope. One man, living his beliefs, without fear can change everything.
And in the final analysis, Jesus’ detractors were seen for what they were, fear mongers who were not worthy to touch the hem of his garment. His courage and that of the good guys in the world elevates us all.
They can keep trying to take the "Christ” from Christmas and, like the Alabama elementary school principal, take the "Easter” from Bunny, but there will always be good guys sticking out their necks for what is right and good.
Happy Easter and a Blessed Passover to you, Friends.
Hold the line, America.