very few newspaper articles move me to repeat; but yesterday I came across an article in the Telegram Tribune during lunch that DID in fact move me. It is another confirmation of feelings I had as a child. Something I could do a "soapbox" posting on! I have decided to post the article here in my journal to share:

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LEONARD PITTS JR.: Some come to war on AIDS a little late

June 18, 2003

BY LEONARD PITTS JR.

The story goes that one of the Pharisees decided to test Jesus with this question: Which commandment is the greatest?

Jesus replied: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself."

No, you haven't wandered into a Sunday school lesson by mistake. Not even close. What you've wandered into is a knotty moral thicket at the intersection of money, faith and AIDS.

By way of illustration, let me tell you about Mr. Stearns, who went to Washington, D.C., last week. Actually, Richard Stearns, president of the Washington state-based Christian relief group World Vision, wasn't alone. Dozens of evangelical Christian leaders traveled to Capitol Hill to lobby Congress on President Bush's plan to allocate billion to fight AIDS in Africa and the Caribbean.

These conservative religious leaders really do want Congress to fund a program designed to fight a disease once known as the gay cancer.

But what gets me is something Stearns said. As reported in the Washington Post, these evangelical leaders acknowledge that they've come late to the fight against HIV/AIDS -- an understatement, given that AIDS has been killing for nearly 25 years.

Stearns explained the tardiness by saying that in the 1980s, evangelicals saw AIDS as an affliction of drug users and gays and "had less compassion for the victims."

Because they thought less of the sufferers, they cared less about the suffering. Contrast that with Jesus saying that loving your neighbor is Christianity's second greatest commandment and tell me you don't see a disconnect wider and deeper than canyons.

Unfortunately, we've seen that disconnect before. I'm thinking of the Christian Coalition's 1996 apology for generations of white evangelical support for segregation and opposition to civil rights.

Then as now, it was good to see conservative Christians move to where they should have been all along.

But then, as now, you wondered: What took you so long? Why did you not understand what everybody else figured out long ago? Why are you the last to pitch in when, by rights, you should have been the first?

Christ, after all, had compassion for tax collectors, adulterers, prostitutes, lepers and others who were not welcome in most homes. He famously walked with the disregarded, the dispossessed and the despised. But these days, many would-be Christians walk by them instead.

"Love the sinner, hate the sin." they chirp.

Even if you buy that dubious formulation, it's hard to see evidence of love in their decision to ignore a deadly pandemic.

Indeed, some evangelical Christians even employ God to justify their callousness, arguing that AIDS is a divine curse upon gay people. They never get around to explaining how the "curse" managed to strike people like 13-year-old Ryan White, whose only sin was to be a hemophiliac in need of a blood transfusion.

Was God's aim that bad?

Or, as seems far more likely, is the problem simply that some of His people are distressingly small of spirit, disturbingly slow to respond to pain, disappointingly selective in their obedience to the second greatest commandment?

Reach LEONARD PITTS JR. at the Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132; toll free at 888-251-4407 or at lpitts@herald.com.

Now, I don't agree with all of the wording used... I rarely do with any writer or speaker. However, the point is very well made about people's use of judgement and how it affects everyone. I picked up a very profound bumpersticker ... I rarely do much but giggle at most of them. But this one is something I strongly believe.... that "NON-judgement day is coming!" In my opinion, religions have become greedy, materialistic, politcal, power-hungry and have strayed so far from what one of the world's most enlightened masters has taught. Guidance is one thing, but to demand and enforce by the "fear of God" is not what I call spiritually grounded. Fear should have nothing to do with spirituality. It has taken me many years of my own truths and my own searching to realize what Jesus and Buddha and Krishna have taught. They are no different one from the other. There is no separation other than what we have created in our own mind... transcendance is the answer. Not neglect or selective assistance. All are one... all are love in a unique package... the package is just an illusion... what you choose to do with each package you are given in life is upto you. Know your intent and choose with an open heart. All is well.

be.

kmc posted this at: 01:00 p.m.questions/comments?