Sentimentality As Terror
In my opinion, what we’re beholding in the above images of Bill and Maria Lee partnering with Samaritan’s Feet to confer footwear to students while unmasked in an enclosed space is a form of abuse. We’re in a Chernobyl type situation in Tennessee. This time it comes with grins and jeans and gloating and the presumed backing of everyone who’s endorsed or appeared in a photo with them over the last four years. A person is a process. I understand that Bill and Maria don’t think of themselves as abusers of children, but I believe the shoe fits until they back down or repent. The data is here. We don’t need to ask what their values are at this time. They’re showing us.
If you’re like me, you love stories of courage and conscience. But if our courage and conscience and even our love aren’t embodied, if they don’t put on flesh when an elected representative is taking selfies of himself endangering the lives of children and their families, I fear our ideas about who we are amount to a cruel sentimentality. Sentimentality can be a form of terror.
I have very good memories of Bill and Maria Lee which makes it difficult for me to speak of them as people currently betraying our public trust and behaving abusively. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to say what I see. It’s time to speak up. If we’re in Tennessee and we don’t, what are we?
When I read Bill Haslem's book - there was a statement that has haunted me about the "Christian tradition of individualism." I believe that this Bill too believes that individualism trumps community. I may need to revisit my reading of the new testament, but aren't Christians to be defined as ones who set their personal desires aside for the benefit and love of others?
David Dark speaks some harsh truths about many of us: how we condemn or judge harshly others who think, feel and act differently than we do; how we don't understand them; and how they negatively influence so many people, even our school children. With disease, maybe death. If we do not speak up and act for the values we say we uphold, what are we doing?