Devotion 2.44/96: Luke 6:42 (Mt 7:5): Board Member

Presented to River Street Cafe, 10 March 2017

Read Luke 6:27-28 and 41-42

I normally try to stay apolitical but there is something to which my mind keeps returning. It is something our PM didn’t start but he isn’t stopping. I am sure his father is rolling over in his grave. They are building a monument promoting hatred of one of our largest trading partners and of the country that sacrificed more for us in WWII than anyone else. In Ottawa, with public money, they are building a monument to ‘victims of Communism’. As a Christian, this troubles me. Jesus says, ‘Love your enemies and take the board out of your own eye before you try to get the sliver out of someone else’s.’

That we would build a monument to provoke China, a country we pride ourselves on being the first to establish ties with and Cuba, a nation that we have stood beside when the rest of our capitalist world stood against it, is quite frankly disgusting. Jesus says, take the board out of your own eye before you take the sliver out of another’s and even if we have decided that others are no longer worthy of being our friends, the Bible says that we should love our enemies.

During WW2, 27 million Soviets died (17 million civilians); 20 million (18 million civilians) Chinese died. That is 47 million in those countries alone that died fighting for us. Did you know that US planned to stay neutral or even join the German war effort until the Communists started winning the war? Even after Pearl Harbour, the reason the US went to war in Europe was because Germany declared war on them. But we extol the virtues of our capitalist democracies while condemn the millions of communists who died for our cause; ‘We should love our enemies’, Jesus says ‘and take the board out of our own eye’.

In WW2, the US murdered almost a million Japanese civilians (800,000) and did you know that they dropped atomic bombs on Japan - after they had offered surrender - intentionally at a time when mothers would be dropping their children at school? But that's okay because they are our friends who were fighting our enemies, some say. ‘Take the board out of your own eye’, Jesus says, ‘and forgive your enemies’.

Did you know that in communist countries around the world women and minorities have always had equal rights? Did you know that for much of its history the USSR was even led by nationalities other than Russians? The capitalist west – even Canada – is quite a different story but that’s okay because they were our enemies so what they did is bad but what we do is okay, some say: However, ‘take the board out of your own eye’, Jesus says, ‘and forgive your enemies’.

Did you know that one reason that the US, South Africa and Australia did not want to sign the peace treaty to end WW1 was that Japan wanted to acknowledge that all races were equal? Did you know that even in the 19^th Century the US Supreme Court ruled that African-Americans were not people and as such were not protected by their own constitution? In my lifetime the US was still a segregated society. They murdered Dr Martin Luther King Jr for non-violently standing up for the oppressed in the name of Christ.  But that is okay because we capitalists were fighting the evil communists, right? Wrong: ‘Take the board out of your own eye’, Jesus says, and ‘forgive your enemies’.

Did you know that even since the end of WW2 the US, the leader of the ‘free’ world, alone has slaughtered up to 30 million civilians - that is almost the entire population of Canada and here is some interesting trivia, did you know that in the last 50 years they have killed almost double that many embryos, foetuses, unborn babies? But this is okay with us. We are too busy building monuments to victims of Communist crimes to worry about our own 1^st World Capitalist sins. If we are Christians instead of building monuments to insult and provoke others we will forgive our enemies, Jesus says, and take the board out of your own eye.

That is on a global scale. My question for us today is what ways do we partake in that same hypocrisy on a personal scale and how can we resolve not to do so anymore?

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