before, now

Before the Blacks in this nation became free women and men, you could listen to a sermon at your local church and listen as the preacher, minister recanted chapter and verse in the Bible telling you why Blacks were and are inferior. They would find passage after passage explaining the two rung theory of evolution, after all it was God’s way.

Before women were given the right to vote, to work in jobs not menial or inferior to men you could put on your Sunday go to church clothes on and sit in the pew and be read to from your minister or preacher how God created Eve from Adam’s rib and wanted her to be less then the man. Men were leaders, women were carriers of babies.

Before people of different races were permitted to marry one another, you could cozy up in your seat in church and listen to a preacher or minister stand upon his pulpit and excitedly explain how God created the races to be separate. They would offer evidence found in some book of the Bible demanding that Blacks marry Blacks, Whites marry Whites and any integration of the two was the work of the Devil.

Before this nation realized that the Constitution was written for all of its citizens we were always told why change was bad. We were always told that one could find fact in the Bible telling us God’s way versus man’s ways. We were preached to ministered to on cultural conservatism and that rights or freedoms for some were not the Christian way in this Christian-Judea nation of ours. The men of cloth always warned the majority to take heed of the minorities needless selfishness to want fair and equal. God created man, many a preacher or minister would add, the White man, and if the White man does not stand strong then somehow religion will totter and God will fall from Heaven.

Now we are witnessing a plethora of angry individuals who lack a backbone and a conscience and the insight to identify their own frailties and failures. Now we see people wanting to blame others for their unfortunate lives, wanting to victimize others, scapegoat others and punish others stating it is THEY who make one’s personal life so full of misery and miserable. Now we see the Bible once again used as ammunition as justification for the human weaknesses of bias, bigotry and bogus. Now we see yet one more war, a cultural war being declared whose only goal is exclude, segregate and divide.

Now we have millions of people who swear that God has told them homosexuals are bad. Now we have millions of people who find passage and verse in the Bible warning us that God, as powerful as he might be, will grow weaker each time a man says I do to another man, each time a woman with her female partner want to adopt a child, each time a soldier who happens to be Gay puts on a Unites States military uniform. Now we have once again reverted to the time like BEFORE when fearful people used God as an excuse for their own inhumanity.

Before we had some brave women and men who saw the hypocrisy of religious dogma, who understood the separation of church and state, who knew that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness belonged to ALL citizens of this nation and they rose above the inane and insane. Before we had leadership which was less self serving and more serving for others. Before we were able to rise above the petty, refute the ridiculous, and rule in a way of inclusiveness and insight. Now, it seems we have forgotten our history, replace right for wrong, and refuse to see the beauty of freedom for all and deny, dismiss and demean. Now we have set our sites to elect monsters instead of men.

Before we were told of doomsday scenarios if Blacks were free, Women voted, the Races intermarried. The preachers and ministers warned of dire results if their hate filled version of the Bible was ignored. Before, we were told it would be too late if we denied God his way. And then Blacks were freed, Women voted, and Interracial Couples married, and there was no second coming of the Lord.

When do we ever, ever learn that when man invents God we have horrible results, when man plays God we have dire consequences? Isn’t it time NOW to stop that madness? If not NOW when?