EQUALITY

A FB friend asked: What does equality mean to you?

First, what is inequality? This may be simpler than you may think. 

Too many judgments about our neighbors are made about their bodies and their characteristics thereof.  Are they fat or thin? Female or male?  Red or yellow; black or white? The correct answer is this quote from the song “Jesus Loves the Little Children”:

Jesus loves the little children

All (emphasis added) the children of the       world

Red and yellow, black and white

They are precious in His sight

Jesus loves the little children of the world

I have heard it said many times, we are ALL God’s children. Or sheep. Or neighbors. 

And then, characteristics are assigned to each group. Fat people are not healthy. Thin people are anorexic. Women are illogical. Men think they are superior. Red people are heathens because they don’t believe in the Christian God. Yellow people, too. Black people aren’t even human and are ignorant. White people are superior. These are generalizations, but I am trying not to bore you. So I will stop here. 

{Important note: I am the son of a former Baptist Minister and call myself religious. I tend to express myself in Christian terms. I am not evangelical, though. Read on.}

A quote: “You don’t have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.” by ― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz Chapter 17.  When I first looked this up, most people attributed it to C.S. Lewis from his book “Mere Orthodoxy.”  I re-read the book, and it is NOT in there. I researched further and found it in A Canticle for Leibowitz, an interesting sci-fi book. I read the book and it IS there, near the end. 

I believe this quote and it is very much a part of me. My sins are when I do not follow this first commandment. 

A Saducee once asked Jesus (in an apparent attempt to trick him) by asking him, “What is the greatest commandment?”

Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He [Jesus] said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." 

My reading of this is: Love God. And how are we to do that? By loving our neighbor. AND our guidelines (law and prophets) must follow these two commandments. If we do that and apply it to EVERYONE the same way, we have equality. The Beatitudes are an example of this. 

Judge not, that ye be not judged. Matthew 7:1. Jesus said it, not me. And yes, I know there is more, but you can read it on your own. More on this another day.

When I came to truly believe this and to incorporate it into my life, I started noticing a weird thing. I started seeing the beauty in obese women. Then I realized where this came from. I was seeing them more as souls than bodies. It helped me deal with race and other issues as well. It got me to think about our bodies and how they were more like a cocoon or a chrysalis. Once we die, we shed these containers and move on to a place where we have no use for them. And that is what WE are. We are ALL souls. We do have a body temporarily. And most of the bad or the evil things we do are because of those bodies. 

So at the end of the US Civil War, no one had the power to GRANT the enslaved equality. They already had it. No one GRANTED women partial equality when they were given the right to vote, etc. They already had it. (and we still have a way to go.) When LGBTQ+ people were given equality and the power to marry, they already had it. No one has the power to grant any of these equalities; IT WAS ALREADY THEIRS. The only thing done was to stop the DENIAL of Equality. Before that, this was a sin.

And our souls are all equal. Not one is more beautiful or less beautiful than another. Not one is more intelligent or less intelligent than another. Not one is more valuable or less valuable than another. We are equal. No amount of your belief, commitment, or validation will change this. It does not matter how much money you do or do not have; you are equal to anyone else and they are equal to you.  It’s like Thomas Jefferson said, “ All men {people} are created equal.” ( I know he was a slave owner. If you are without sin = and no one is - you may now cast the first stone.) Denial of this is the worst form of entitlement. AND sin.

Jesus loves the little children equally.