Inhumanity to Humanity

For those of you who get to Detroit, I would recommend visiting The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History.  You should plan to be there three to four hours.  Why do I mention the museum?  This past weekend with two colleagues and fellow Christians from India, we spent the day in downtown Detroit walking, taking pictures, and diving deep into the history of Africans this museum shared with us.  

The museum highlights the inhumanity and injustices the African people endured hundreds if not thousands of years ago well before the establishment of the United States.  The hardest part to understand is that Africans actually sold other Africans into slavery.  

Arab/Muslims enslaved just as many if not more Africans than European and American Christian nations did.  You could find slaves in the Middle East and across Asia Pacific finally extending into Europe and reaching in the new world of America in the 1600's.  Here in the United States, blacks also owned black slaves and there were white slaves too but those numbers pail in comparison to white slave owners.  

There were two things that really hit me hard from this museum.  One of the amazing things I took from the museum was these individual clung to their faith while being enslaved, beaten, whipped, and forced into hard labor.  The other was how harshly blacks were treated on slave ships many of them would die or if they came down with a disease or sickness would be thrown overboard to drown.  

One such ship owner John Newton  cried out to God due to a violent storm to save him which God did.  John still continued in the slave trade many years after God saved the ship.  John Newton is famous for the Christian hymn "Amazing Grace".  God used a vial and wretched evil man who caused the death and enslavement of hundreds of Africans to write a song of grace.  A song I sung to my own son for seven straight days while he was in the hospital for a blood infection.  He was only a few months old.  It is still in my heart and on my lips "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound."    

The Holy Bible in Genesis during Abraham time sees the first slave (bond servant) that is a female servant.  God also enslaved his own people, Israel, calling on Moses to lead them to the promise land much like he called many here in America like Frederick Douglas, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King to abolish slavery forever.  

The 20th century has seen a rise in the evils of inhumanity which have been well documented whether you are talking Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Adolf Hitler, Margaret Sanger, Pol Pot, Vladimir Lenin, and Joseph Stalin.  There has also been hundreds of serial killers and millions of abortions globally.

How do we ensure humanity equals freedom?  Only one way, Jesus Christ.  Jesus tells a scribe in Mark 12:30-31"And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment. 31 And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these."

That is how we ensure humanity equals freedom to live with Love.  James Allen, As A Man Thinketh, adds more on how to live life in freedom "Men do not attract that which they want, but that which they are. Their whims, fancies, and ambitions are thwarted at every step, but their inmost thoughts and desires are fed with their own food, be it foul or clean. The "divinity that shapes our ends" is in ourselves; it is our very Self. Man is manacled only by himself. Thought and action are the jailers of Fate - they imprison, being base; they are also the angels of Freedom - they liberate, being noble."   

That one day where I was "manacled" by the police bringing me to jail for the night.  The glory be to God for taking my out of the "jailers of fate" where by I was saved by the "angels of Freedom".  My heritage is German which murdered millions of Jewish people.  The irony is the Jewish people have been such a blessing to me and my family over the years in every city we have ever lived.  They understand that humanity=freedom.  

Two days ago in Detroit, I met a Hasidic Rabbi at a bakery where we shared some laughs and talked about NJ and Brooklyn.  His niece was flying back that day to NJ.  One of my best friends Josh is a Reform or Real Reform Jew.  It is a joy because we both went through the "jailers of Fate" in our actions and thoughts only to come out of the swamps of hell into a place of joy and peace with the Love of God gracing our heart, soul, mind, and strength.  That is how we are going to defeat the "inhumanity" of evil souls to set a course for humanity which brings "Freedom".  The Spirit of God is the dove that enters our soul with the Lord's wisdom, knowledge, understanding and workmanship to liberate us with LOVE into nobility with Christ.