There was one imagine that has burned inside me since seeing it several days ago. It concerns what happened when pro-healthcare reform people rallied at the same time as anti-reform Tea Baggers in front of the offices of Representative Mary Jo Kilroy in Columbus, Ohio . I first saw this on Shannyn Moore's blog last week, and Bill Maher showed the most disturbing snippet last week on Real Time. It originally was posted on The Political Carnival.
Look at the video below, and take note of the treatment by the protesters of 60 year old Robert Letcher who has Parkinson's Disease. The video has gone viral, and you can read more about the incident in the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch .
While sitting in church this morning and listening to Gospel concerning Jesus forgiving the woman who had committed adultery, and telling the mob who who came to stone her to death, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone", and being reminded in the homily that as children we are taught that "God is everywhere", I had a thought or two.
Let us forget that the man in the video with Parkinson's, Mr. Letcher, was a former engineer with a doctorate form Cornell. Let us suspend our disbelief, and say this was a man with no traceable past- we know nothing of him, other than he claimed to be seriously ill with Parkinson's, and wanted to see the passage of the healthcare reform bill.
What if you, me, or the protesters on either side didn't know Robert Letcher from Adam?
Christians are told, and believe, that "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again".
But what if Christ did come back....and did so in the form of a 60 year old man with Parkinson's Disease, confronting an angry mob in a city in Ohio where he was mocked, and had money thrown at him, and insulted by the alleged good people who "want their country back"?".
Ridiculous you say? Blasphemous?
We are often hit with the old cliche of God working in mysterious ways....if he could appear as a burning bush, or pillar of fire, why couldn't the son of God come back as man in late middle age with a painful and unfortunate condition of Parkinson's?
Doing so might be the ultimate test of the compassion- or the lack of- by mankind.
What if it were a test....and once again, the human race failed?
Is this too much to handle, to impossible to fathom? Okay....let's make our fictionalized person an angel, or the personification of a living human saint Would that make the harsh treatment anymore less cruel? At what point is it OK to treat your fellow man like trash?
The bottom line....its never acceptable.
Buddhists live by a creed that we should treat each individual as if they were a deity, and respect that which is holy in them. Its not that much different as the Judeo-Christian belief of an ever present God.
Its sad that the men who mocked and threw money at Robert Letcher last week in Columbus didn't take the time to see what is good and holy in a man suffering from a condition that for the grace of God that they never have to experience. These were men claiming to be driven to wanting to save their country.....but instead they became motivated by fear and hatred, and became worse than the monster of "big government" they were trying to slay.
And I wonder how they are spending their Sunday afternoon?
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