Part 1

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

The phrase in this blog headline courses – or, should I say, “coarses” – through my brain these days as I watch a range of current events.

Actually, better said, it lurks in the back – sometimes the front – of my mind as I watch inhumane developments around the world.

The suffering and genocide Vladimir Putin is wreaking on Ukraine is clearly a set of war crimes.

For me, Putin’s war crimes recall the incredibly terrible deeds racked up by Adolph Hitler in World War II as he tried to exterminate an entire race of people – the Jews.  Thankfully, I was not alive then, but have read enough about it – as well as visited Germany a couple times – that Hitler’s atrocities ring clear.

Current day Germans generally try to forget the atrocities and, frankly, I don’t blame them for wanting to do so, if only because so much time has elapsed from past World War II generations.  I do hope at least a faint memory prevents a recurrence.

When I went on-line to look up the phrase “man’s inhumanity to man,” here is a quick summary of what I found:

“The two main examples include the tragedy of the Jews in World War II and the African Americans’ during the slave trade.”

So, instead of just thinking about Hitler’s atrocities, it also makes sense of remember the abhorrent slave trade in our own country.

The expression itself — “man’s inhumanity to man” — derives from a quote in a poem called From Man was Made to Mourn: A Dirge, which was written by Robert Burns in 1785.  It speaks of oppression and cruelty that mankind causes and that mankind suffers.

It is impossible for me to imagine what possesses some people – Putin and Hitler are only two examples – to wreak such havoc.  They clearly don’t care one whit about human life.

In the face of such realities, I turned – properly so – to the Bible to remind myself of what it might say about this issue.

Here in the California desert, where my wife I attend Southwest Church, the great pastor there always says this after he reads from the Bible:  “What I have just read is from the greatest book ever written, the Bible, and I bear witness that every word of it is true.”

Well said!

So, what the scripture says mimics this paragraph:

“Each life is truly a gift from God.  We can honor His gift by cherishing our own lives, as well as respecting and valuing the lives of others.  We are precious in His sight, and by trusting Him and being diligent in our choices, we can share light and truth with the world around us.”

I found these key verses:

·      John 3:16/  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

·      Romans 5:8/  But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

·      Matthew 6:26/  Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

·      Psalm 100:3/  Know that the Lord, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.

·      1 John 3:1-2/  See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. 

Notice that these words don’t say that God made Americans, so we are better than all others.  They say that God “loved the world.”  The entire world. 

Therefore, the call is for us to value all human beings, no matter whether we agree with them or not.  Neighbors with whom we disagree?  Yes.  Immigrants?  Yes.  Members of a political party other than our own?  Yes.   

They were made by God and they have the potential, the Bible says, “to become his children” if they choose to believe in Him. That’s the best way to avoid “man’s inhumanity to man.”