Anyone who knows me, knows that I love baseball. Some of the
fondest memories I have of my childhood are related to the grand game. I remember
winning, and loosing, smiling and crying. I remember my dad being an umpire and
treating me more strictly than the rest of the players because he didn’t want
anyone to think he was favoring me. I didn’t understand that concept then, but now
I can see there was a lot of wisdom in it. Many of our family outings have been
built around baseball. When my dad turned 75, we went to Cooperstown to visit
the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. And when he turned 80, we
traveled to Arlington and Houston to watch the Rangers and the Astros.
So, it is with that as a background, that I pen the current
article. The new season, after being delayed for nearly four months, finally
began last night. The Yankees met the winners of last year’s World Series, the
Washington Nationals. The game was rather strange to behold: no one sitting in
the stands, many players and coaches wearing masks, the game itself being
called after five inning because of bad weather, and so on. But the thing
(really, the two things) that caught my eye was the complete kowtowing on the
part of Major League Baseball (MLB) to the “Black Lives Matter” movement. According
to news articles, players are “allowed” to wear patches on their uniforms. One of
them reads “United for Change” and the other reads “Black Lives Matter.” And the
pitching mound sported a “BLM” logo behind the box.
Now, although it may not seem like it, I wasn’t born yesterday.
I know that MLB, like any other big business, is all about the bottom line. I
don’t want to be super cynical, but let’s face it, big business will do
whatever it thinks is convenient or expedient in order to increase that bottom
line: money. Thus, I’m not too chafed by such a brazen attempt to grovel before
an organization that in their own words “…affirm[s] the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks,
undocumented folks, folks with records, women, and all Black lives along the
gender spectrum. Our network centers those who have been marginalized within Black
liberation movements.” (emphasis mine)
Those of
us who are believers have understood, much longer than “Black Lives Matter” (BLM)
has even existed, that life matters. But unlike BLM, we know all lives matter because
everyone is made in the image of God. Those who are fixated on the founding
documents of this nation as though they were the Bible, the Declaration of Independence
and the Constitution, will recognize the fact that life matters because all men
have been “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” Mr.
Jefferson can be forgiven for including “happiness” among those rights, but it
is undeniable that life and liberty are among those rights that the Creator has
indeed bestowed on each and every human being, whatever their color.
But unlike
the believer who can point to the Bible and say “lives matter because God says
they matter,” the majority of those who follow the BLM narrative cannot base
their belief on anything objective and true. In their worldview, black lives or
any lives matter simply because they say they do. And if that is the basis under
which anything has value, then those things may be valuable today, but not
valuable tomorrow. You can see that very flaw even today. In 2019, there were
nearly 300,000 abortions of black babies in this country. So, you see, black
lives matter, unless they happen to be in the womb. Then they are strangely
valueless. If you go to the BLM website, the one thing you won’t see about
their mission is that of defending the most defenseless among us: the unborn. If
you’re a thinking individual, you have to ask yourself the question “can I
support an organization that so glaringly omits those who are the most defenseless
from their supposed mission?” BLM has a lot of other issues that make it
dangerous and errant, as the quote above demonstrates. But hypocrisy is perhaps
the biggest of all.
I have been and continue to be stunned that over most of media BLM is not seriously scrutinized. What you have written is no secret, but you wouldn't know it except for a few folk on Fox News or online. I find myself more and more perplexed by so many things happening today. It is not the world I grew up in.
ReplyDeleteAbout all that can be said about this attitude is what Paul told the Corinthians: "And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God" (2 Corinthians 4:3-4). Blessings
DeleteGreat article. In regards to the right to "happiness" declared by Jefferson, we might recall that the pursuit of happiness as he envisioned it meant freedom of thought, right to property, and freedom to reap the rewards of your own labor. These are embodied within the idea: "that life and liberty are among those rights that the Creator has indeed bestowed on each and every human being, whatever their color." The happiness did not imply that we have the right to be happy at all costs, or at the expense of others, or that one group has that right and so others must give up their own claim to it. We should also recall that the meaning of liberty meant the freedom to pursue thought, property, and the fruits of your labor, and not license to pursue whatever pleasure gratifies whatever impulse or longing you experience. Liberty is bounded within the framework of law and morality. License is unbounded and without moral principle. The definition of words matter, and political types are constantly at work redefining our language. In 1984 Newspeak was created, and revised over and over with the hope of narrowing language to such a degree that thought itself would eventually be equally diminished so that the populace would be incapable of thinking any thoughts the Party deemed out of bounds. We have allowed freedom to be replaced by license, and truth to be replaced by tolerance, such that all truth is subjective. (Tollerance is another term that has been so redefined that it actually means its opposite.) I'll stop there, but I think you see the point. Boundless license means everything is okay to the tollerant, and the tollerant decide the things that are not okay. The first thing that is not okay is the truth.
ReplyDeleteThe greatest irony I see in all this, is the fact that "tolerance" has been extended to anything and everything...except the truth. As you well put it, the truth is the only thing that the world seems not to tolerate. It seems to escape the tolerance warriors, that they are willing to tolerate, unless they disagree with a particular view; and in this case, Christianity is the big objection that must be resisted at all costs. Thus, we have tolerance without tolerating! As Michael Kruger called it in his book, "The Intolerance of Tolerance."
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