What Matters Most

Sunday, May 3, 2015

Thoughts About God

What Matters Most............…Commentary by Jim High

I grew up long before computers showed us how they could handle millions of requests all at once. So in college I began to have serious questions whenever our preacher asked everyone to bow their heads and say a silent prayer to God. And our preachers back in the 50’s and 60’s did that a lot. How could God hear all those prayers being offered up at the same time? There were several hundred at our church and many more throughout Tupelo who were in church from 11 until noon on Sunday, plus in our state and country and around the world. Lots of prayers were being offered up all at once, so how did God sort them all out.

Another problem confronted my teenage mind. If God created the world and said it was good, how could He possibly stand by as we humans messed it up? For surely God didn’t mean for us to have wars and kill millions of His creation. And maybe God realized that tornadoes and hurricanes were an unintended result of the weather patterns He had created. Or maybe He was sad that he had created viruses and bacteria, or whatever causes cancer.

Well you get the idea there are a lot of things that need fixing in today’s world. So I wondered how this all knowing, all powerful God could keep hands off of His creation. Since He surely saw all of the problems that we humans from time to time see, how could He just sit there in Heaven when with the flick of His finger or the wave of His magic wand he could instantly fix it? That inaction on His part really confused my rational, logical, teenage mind.

And that rational, logical mind, that I still have by the way, needed a solution to these questions. I’d like to share with you what I came up with. It is a story of course, but we also now know the story of Adam and Eve is just early man’s story of how God created the universe. Actually my solution to the problem was quite easy. Here’s how it goes.

Yes, God created the universe and all that is in it and pronounced it very good. But then He realized that His creation might not actually be the perfect Garden of Eden that He had planned and also that as time went by and more and more humans inhabited the Earth they would, well do what we have done. And God thought to Himself, “How will I ever be able to keep from reaching down and fixing it.”

Then in a flash of Divine Brilliance that only God could have, He said, “I’ve got it. The universe I have created is good, very good, especially if I allow it time to mature and learn for itself that all is good. So I will dissolve myself into my creation and make myself as part of all that is. This will also be the best way for me to watch over my creation and to be a part of it forever. It will also avoid the temptation to fix it. The humans I’ve created and who will now be part of what I am will be totally in charge. It will be their responsibility. And my goal was always to create humans in my own image. So let it be done.” And poof God was infused into all that He had created.

This action solved both problems. No need or temptation to fix it and no problem about unscrambling all those millions of prayers being offered up to God because He wasn’t there to listen to them. Now we would need to listen more to each other to hear the voice of God.

What Matters Most………This is just a story and who can say if it is true or not. In my story God is everything, now you might consider this means that God is nothing, but when God is in everything, I consider God to be everything. Then instead of praying to a God out there somewhere and worshiping that far away God, we can begin to pray for and toward others, worship and respect all others as well as all of Creation, and care about others and all of Creation, which is what God actually is for me. In my story there is not God and us, there is only God as Us, and everything else as well.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Football and Politics

What Matters Most

Commentary by Jim High

Football and Politics

Football is a game, politics is not. Most people I think would agree with that statement. But maybe football is not just a game to Alabama’s Head Football Coach Nick Saban, college football’s highest paid coach, who makes an annual salary of $7,300,000.00. Do you realize that every day, 365 days a year, Nick Saban is paid $20,000.00.

But football is just a game, and sadly my team the Mississippi State Bulldogs lost to Nick Saban’s team last weekend by only 5 points. Seems that fancy salary ought to buy more than that. But it is still the best season of football in Mississippi State’s history and even a grossly overpaid coach cannot take that away from us. We have two games left and will probably get another chance at beating Alabama before this season is over.

It is easier for me to understand that football is after all just a game because when I attended Mississippi State back in 1958 – 1962, we won only two SEC football games during my four years and were solidly in that streak when Ole Miss beat Mississippi State in football 17 years in a row. That streak did not end until 1964. Now basketball, that’s another matter entirely as we won the SEC championship 3 of those 4 years.

State’s not so good football fortunes continued for some time and I got in the habit of going to Pickwick Lake with friends and going out to a rocky beach on the Tennessee River in my boat, building a bonfire and listening to the Saturday afternoon games. When we lost, which usually happened, you could click off the radio, add a log to the fire, pop another beer and realize that football is only a game.

Now we all know that politics is not a game, as it affects all our lives. But the problem is that for way too long now the Republicans and the Democrats have been playing politics as if it was just a game and the point was to see whether Democrats or Republicans would win. Political parties winning and losing elections is not the point, and politics is not a game. Right now, however, politics is being played as if it were a game and the whole nation is the loser.

Most Americans couldn’t care less about who wins and who loses the elections because most Americans are smart enough to know that politics is not a game. It is about our very lives and the success of our country as a nation. With the Congressional approval ratings in the tank it is obvious that something is seriously wrong.

Take the Affordable Care Act, about half the states, all Republican, have refused to expand Medicaid leaving hundreds of thousands of their citizens without access to healthcare. Do we want to live in a nation that does not provide healthcare to all its citizens? Why would we want that? What advantage does it give us? Now even though the cost to the states is zero for three years and then just a small percentage after that, you’ll hear Republicans screaming that their state can’t afford it. What I want to scream is that we can’t afford to continue to spend 55% of our country’s annual federal budget on the military and on unnecessary wars. Just think what the country could do if we spent just half that amount and the rest on services for our citizens. The country is falling apart while we waste money abroad. Does this make sense to anyone?

I think politicians have forgotten the point of government; it is not to serve themselves and their rich supporters, but to serve us, all the citizens, not just a selected few. To do that properly they need to settle on the end result that they want for all Americans and then work toward making it happen.

While I am on my soapbox, let me also state that we’re moving in the wrong direction and if we continue playing the game of politics it will ultimately destroy the country. We cannot expect our country, or any country, to succeed when 5% of the wealthiest people own 80% of everything. This can only bread revolution.

What Matters Most…………….Repeat after me – “Football is a game, politics is not.” Let’s fix this while there is still time to do so.

Friday, February 7, 2014

Thoughts About God

What Matters Most………….Commentary by Jim High

I grew up long before computers showed us how they could handle millions of request all at once. So in college I began to have serious questions whenever our preacher asked everyone to bow their heads and say a silent prayer to God. And our preachers back in the 50’s and 60’s did that a lot. How could God hear all those prayers being offered up at the same time? There were several hundred at our church and many more throughout Tupelo who were in church from 11 until noon on Sunday, plus in our state and country and around the world. Lots of prayers were being offered up all at once, so how did God sort them all out.

Another problem confronted my teenage mind. If God created the world and said it was good, how could He possibly stand by as we humans messed it up? For surely God didn’t mean for us to have wars and kill millions of His creation. And maybe God realized that tornados and hurricanes were an unintended result of the weather patterns He had created. Or maybe He was sad that he had created viruses and bacteria, or whatever causes cancer.

Well you get the idea there are a lot of things that need fixing in today’s world. So I wondered how this all knowing, all powerful God could keep hands off of his creation. Since He surely saw all of the problems that we humans from time to time see, how could He just sit there in Heaven when with the flick of His finger or the wave of His magic wand he could instantly fix it? That inaction on His part really confused my rational, logical, teenage mind.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Gun Violence

What Matters Most……………..……Commentary by Jim High

Why write about Gun Violence during the Christmas Holidays? Why not? Families are all together during the holidays and what better time to think about and discuss this important issue. If your child attends a school, or you go to the mall, or a movie theatre, or a church, you might be glad to have had that conversation as gun violence has occurred at these places on many occasions. December 14, 2013, was the first anniversary of the school shooting at Newtown, CN. And this week I saw a cartoon on Facebook with this little boy sitting on Santa’s lap saying, “Here’s my wish list for Christmas this year, and it’s the same as last year.” The list had just one item on it – Sensible Gun Laws. So I think this is the perfect time to talk about gun violence in this country.

Let’s start at the beginning with the 2^nd Amendment to the United States Constitution. It is one of the shortest and most direct of the amendments and it reads…..”A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” And while we are thinking of this one, we need to take a look at number three also. It reads…..”No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

It is very apparent from reading these two amendments that the United States of American back in the late 1700’s had no standing army, no military bases, and no arsenals where Arms were kept. The 2^nd Amendment starts by talking about the need for “A well regulated Militia” since no standing army was available to defend the country. When soldiers were needed they would be called into service and the government wanted them to have their own Arms. The amendment makes it clear that they were allowed to have Arms between times of need, and based on life in those times to use their gun for hunting to provide food for their families. I doubt much hunting for sport was done in colonial days. I listed the 3^rd Amendment as evidence that these amendments were designed to make provisions for a Militia of the citizens to defend the country if and when necessary.

Finally we must also realize that Arms in the period from 1776 up to almost the Civil War meant a single shot musket that required loading the powder and ball down the barrel of the gun. And there are no court cases from those time that tested the right of citizens to own a cannon under the definition of the word Arms.

Fast forward into today’s world where it is estimated that 350,000,000 guns of all types are owned by individuals. Right here in Tupelo we have a monthly Gun Show & Sale. Our country’s gun laws are a mess to say the least. I won’t list the mass shooting in the year since the Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, nor the total number of deaths in our country every year from gun violence. You can Google all that info for yourself, but we all know that it is huge and it is awful, and more important it is wrong.

I personally own two guns. I think it would be impossible to outlaw gun ownership in this country and I don’t think it is necessary. But like that little boy on Santa’s lap in the cartoon, I think we need sensible gun laws. The vast majority of the country thinks so too. No private citizen needs an AK-47 or a clip that can fire 100 bullets in a few seconds. Most of us know these things. And most of us know that gun violence in our country is out of control.

What Matters Most…….Do we want to live in a country that has a gun death rate that is 20 times higher than any other developed country in the world? Did you know that between 1955 and 1975, the Vietnam War killed over 58,000 American soldiers – less than the number of civilians killed with guns in the U.S. in an average two-year period? We must grant that little boy’s wish, and soon, so he can grow up in a country with sensible gun laws.