Barriers – Sunday, August 03, 1980
We are constantly reminded of the barriers that divide us. The speeches we make from our soapboxes are not alike; the flags we wave may be mismatched. For the least excuse we may busy ourselves drawing boundaries, sketching lines that divide nation from nation and neighbor from neighbor. We mark class distinctions, make walls, and learn to stare at others whose skin or speech or manner is different than our own. Yes, all of us are the true inheritors of a world that boasts the Great Wall of China, the Iron Curtain, the “white lines” on buses, the Jewish ghettos once designed to separate the fit from the so-called “unfit.” We hear about the .’beautiful people” and know even as we read that there is a gulf between them and the rest of us not-so-beautiful people.
One of the earliest and most unfortunate lessons of mortality is that for one reason or another, for difference in opinion or culture or status, the world is divided, between “them” and “us,”
But if we were to start forming circles designed to unite some and banish others, we would discover an interesting thing. We exclude others, too. We may start with a circle including just those in our neighborhood. A fine start. And then we may make the circle smaller including just those in our neighborhood of the same religion. The circle may shrink further if we include just those in our neighborhood of the same religion and the same political belief. Or how about just those in our neighborhood of the same religion, the same political belief and the same income level? On and on our circle could shrink until we were left without a circle at all—only ourselves, alone, miserable, beyond the need to expand our heart or our humanity,
There is, however, so much more that unites rather than divides mankind for those who have the eyes to see. Henry Wadsworth Long fellow noted, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”1
Everyone who is mortal experiences pain, a universal denominator. Everyone knows the joy in new life, the first clutching of a baby’s fist, Everyone knows that occasional secret victory, and the desire to improve. These are universals that tread across all barriers.
Thus, when Christ gave the Sermon on the Mount, he was speaking to us all for he said blessed are the meek, the poor, those who mourn, We all know about those conditions for we experience them, no matter what our differences. And we need to use that same kind of broad vision in addressing ourselves to mankind, seeing beyond the differences to our haunting similarities. This vision ought to teach us with Charles Lucas that “Civilization is just a slow process of learning to be kind,”2
1 You Can See Forever, Johnson, Caesar, compiler The C.R. Gibson Co., Norwalk, CT. pg. 47.
2 Ibid.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
August 03, 1980
Broadcast Number 2,659