On Sunday Pastor Dennis Terry said that anyone who lives in the US who doesn’t believe that this is a Christian nation whose supreme leader is Jesus should “Get out!”
I’m Jewish—I don’t worship Jesus, but thanks for making me feel so at home.
On Monday three Jewish children and a rabbi were killed in Toulouse by a terrorist linked to Al-Qaeda.
I’m a Jewish mother—I take the targeting of Jewish children particularly hard. (I can’t type the word “innocent” before child since it goes without saying that a child is innocent and has done no one any harm.)
I know that there is a difference between these acts, but at the core—at the thoughts behind the vile words and the violent act—not so much.
As a Jewish woman, I’m not feeling that the world is my kosher oyster.
Add to the anti-Semitism the War on Women going on full-steam ahead, and I’m feeling even more encircled by people who have no desire to let me be who I am if it’s not the same as who they are.
Then add to all that the fact that I’m a teacher and I can tell you, it’s a shock that my hurt hasn’t transformed to anger. But that is not what I do—unlike these men.
What unifies these men? Is it arrogance? Or hatred? Or envy? Emptiness perhaps? Whatever it is, I’m glad I don’t have it. I’d rather have to wonder about what evil will emerge next—and how to try to prevent it—than worry that people will see into the evil within me.
It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if those who claim to speak for God would heed his words. But those people are usually doing the talking, not the listening. It would have been nice, wouldn’t it, if they had heeded at least one little commandment, the one that seems to encapsulate the rest: You shall not steal. As in don’t take from someone what doesn’t belong to you. Don’t steal a life. Don’t steal a thought. Don’t steal a hope. Don’t steal. Keep your hands to yourself. Keep your words to yourself.
And the next time they feel that they're better than everyone else, they should remember that we all wear underwear and we all poop.