A nation divided

This week at our school Mass, we honored the 8th graders on their graduation. The Gospel reading that day was from Mark and it was the "golden rule" of loving your neighbor as yourself. Sure, that's an easy message to deliver and make relevant, but I really agonized about what to tell these kids. I know...you know...and they know what kind of world is being left for them by these past few generations. It's only natural that we want to protect everything we have worked for our entire lives and that we all would like some semblance of an easy retirement. The reality is, that it will not happen unless these 8th graders are willing to pay for it. A two party government has always been a good thing for checks and balances in our past and from keeping one party's philosophy from dominating. Unfortunately, these philosophies have mutated into extreme views and neither party can seem to even remotely accept the possibility that either party has something to offer this world. Independents and tea-party alternatives are attacked as irrelevant and civility is a thing of the past.

When I thought about this and the repercussions it would have with these kids, I could only think of Jesus' words that a house divided cannot stand. The way this country is divided, and the world for that matter, will eventually lead to its collapse. We are not that far from it and just because we are the good old USA, doesn't mean it cannot happen. My only message to these kids that day was to take their education seriously and to please save us.

Love your neighbor as yourself is the solution that Jesus gives us to these problems. I asked that they take their studies and mesh them to God's Words and to be the solution to the problems of divisions because it does not look like our generations are going to get it done. The Bible truly is the blueprint for a Utopian society if we follow the directions. Unfortunately, love has become a four letter word and like Israel in the Old Testament, we as humans think we have better ways than God. That's a recipe for disaster.