Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Jimmy Carter


President Jimmy Carter has taken a lot of flack over his trip to talk to Hamas to try to make peace between the Palestinians and Israel. It's a no brainer that the only way peace will ever come to the middle east (or anywhere else) is if both sides talk and someone has got to monitor those talks. President Carter seems the perfect man to do that. His organization monitors elections all over the world to make sure they are fair. The man has done a lot to bring peace around the world.

The war mongers in this administration, however, do not want peace. The rich are making a killing off this war and they are not interested in peace. Therefore they resent his attempts at peacemaking.

Nothing really changes, does it? Thousands of years ago, the Psalmist wrote this:

Why do the nations conspire,
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord and his anointed, saying,
Let us burst their bonds asunder,
and cast their cords from us."

Nations still make war for profit and they expect the nation's most vulnerable to fight those wars. Seldom do you see the children of the rich and powerful in those dangerous places.

I am on the side of those most vulnerable. Sometimes they are vulnerable because they feel they have no other options. Some cannot find jobs and the jobs they are able to find with their high school educations or less, are either minimum wage jobs or at most $9.00 an hour. Who, in this day and age, can live on $9.00 an hour? The answer, of course, is no one. That why these vulnerable folks join up. They know they will be taken care of...if we're talking about food, shelter, and medical attention that is. At the first sign of war or conflict of any kind, they are sent into the fray.

No, President Carter has the right idea. Peace is only won through talking out the problems and sometimes compromise. That's the way it is with families, neighbors and communities. And that's the way it is with countries too. We have to learn to respect the cultural differences of our world and understand that not everyone sees things our way. That's the only way we can ever make this world a community.

2 comments:

Sansego said...

Do you still have family in Georgia? If you do, the next time you're there, you should go to Plains to attend Sunday school when he's teaching. You can get his schedule online somewhere (just google Maranatha Baptist Church Plains GA and see what comes up).

I went in January 2004 when Howard Dean was there. It was great. I had front row seats. The lesson was on Job. Jimmy is quite personable and funny. And he was right on our energy usage back in the 1970s.

Margie's Musings said...

I would love to do that, Nicholas, but my son is being transferred to Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri in two weeks so I will not be going back to Georgia.