Political column by FC resident Larry Wiwi
Do not let the title fool you, I make no claims to be a Biblical scholar, and in fact am in the middle of my third cover-to-cover run through the Bible and it is not getting much easier to sort through this long and complex text. That said, I cannot help but wonder if mankind, and the United States in particular, are going through what I will euphemistically call our “Israelite moment.”
For those unfamiliar, in the Bible the Israelites are God’s Chosen People whom he repeatedly saved from enemies, and delivered countless miracles, and blessings in abundance and in return all God asked was faithful obedience to his laws. Unfortunately, the Israelites repeatedly, and I do mean repeatedly, failed to remain faithful and suffered the consequences in various forms of plagues, famines, wars, disease, etc.
Until recently, I never understood how the Israelites could be so stupid, I mean after all if you got to see Moses part the waters, water flowing from a rock, grievous disabilities and diseases miraculously cured in real life, how could you possibly become unfaithful? What I was missing was the time element: The cycle of punishment, redemption and falling from faith again happened over many centuries and history was largely passed generation to generation by stories and tribal legend since books and even paper did not exist, so people forgot their history and had to painfully re-learn it.
I wonder out loud if we are not currently living this out: So many of our citizens do not know our history or world history and consequently we seem to be on the path to have to painfully re-learn it. I am not referencing Biblical history here, though it almost certainly applies, I am referencing just the history of the last three centuries, essentially after 1700. Here are some examples:
- We have a frighteningly large group of leaders and citizens who believe socialism is a good alternative or even better form of government than our representative republic, apparently forgetting the brutal oppression and suffering under socialism.
- We have leaders and people calling for us to give up our first and second amendment rights under the collective notion that we cannot offend each other and do not need to protect ourselves from our own government, forgetting the essential lesson of our own revolution.
- We have a free press, now including large social media outlets that has in many instances willfully become the “ministry of truth” bent on manipulating people instead of informing them which always leads to oppression
- Under the misused banner of “equity”, we are seeing race-based preferences being re-implemented and even race based hate and division taught in our schools via “Critical Race Theory.”
Again, I am no prophet or Biblical scholar, but do have to wonder if our forgetting God and forgetting our history is about to come home to roost….
Larry Wiwi