"Have you come here for forgiveness?
Have you come to raise the dead?
Have you come here to play Jesus?"
I'm thinking it was a piss poor choice for a wedding song, but I'm sure she was focusing on the words: "Love is a temple; love the higher love" in spite of the words that follow:
"You ask me to enter
But then you make me crawl"
The song is hardly a love song. It's a painful song about loss, about divide, and dragging someone through the mud, forcing them to do what you want while pretending to let them be free, and asking the most poignant question that goes through anyone's mind when in that position: Why?
The Pledge of Allegiance is supposed to be the words, the dedication that we make as American citizens of our devotion to our Country and the Rights she affords us. There are often social media posts about the Pledge of Allegiance. Most are posts about the words "under God". Two little words. The original pledge read as follows:
"I pledge allegience to the flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
It was published in The Youth's Companion in 1892. A socialist preacher, Francis Bellamy, who wrote it, hoped that it would be used by citizens in any country. He didn't write it for us. He didn't write it for America at all. In 1922, the allegience used in most schools across the country and words were altered from "the flag and the Republic" to "the flag of the United States". The words "of America" were added in 1923. It was formerly recognized by Congress by most accounts in 1942. In 1954, due to fears of communists, the Cold War, and the religiously motivated, the words "under God" were added.
I'm a little mortified to know the history of how "under God" was added. The 1950s were a terrifying time. People spent a lot of time and money on bomb shelters. Many believed nuclear war, was not only a possibility, but eminent. Fallout, nuclear fallout, shelter signs doned school walls well into the 1980s.
We grew up in fear of nuclear weapons, of the "God-less communists", and we saw the effects of veterans abandoned by a nation divided by a lack of rights for various citizens based on race, sex, age, hippies and "draft dodgers" versus draftees and volunteers in our military. Our own hypocrisy began to eat us up like a cancer. It was a totally different time from the 1950s to the late 1980s than is even conceivable to now.
In the 1950s, the Supreme Court upheld adding the words "under God" when the Jehovah's Witnesses sued because their faith doesn't allow for the swearing of allegiance to anything other than God. (Probably where they got the "bad" name that they have to this day.) Starting in the 1980s, the controversy over the two little words began to re-rear its ugly head again. As the Berlin Wall crumbled, the USSR fell, and as democracy began to spread, all of the sudden, these words became an issue again. In 1992, California schools were sued by an atheist because he didn't want his daughter to have to recite the Pledge with the words "under God". High schools have been sued over the years because it indirectly forces youth by peer pressure to say the words to appease the surrounding spectators and participants. In 2002, the Supreme Court stated that the addition of the 2 little words went against the Bill of Rights and the 1st Amendment, The Freedom of Religion.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, many schools no longer require the Pledge of Alliegence every morning. The two little words have become more important than ensuring that American children learn the pride that my generation and the generations before us learned since pubic schools started to take shape in the 1880s. The pride in our Country, instilling that pride, is taking a back burner to TWO words. Our children barely know to stand up as Old Glory goes by. Hell, some of them don't even know what "Old Glory" means. Some don't know to put their hand over their hearts, because this is something that used to be taught at a very young age in school. Now, our children learn it at baseball games. Why not? Their heroes are now video game avatars, professional athletes and reality television contestants who won half a million dollars.
There are plenty of eCards and quotes all over the internet, Facebook and ales, where American citizens demand that it's all about "under God". The Pledge, our great Country, is all founded on religion. Yet, the first words of the First Amendment are the following:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of
The very first line of our precious Freedoms states there can be nothing to prevent us from worshiping or not worshiping. Just by allowing anyone to follow any religion, we guarantee the right to follow none.
Our Founding Fathers could probably never imagine such a petty argument dividing what has become the Greatest Nation. It is not the "lack of God" deteroriating the United States. It is petty arguments that are deteroriating the Country that we love. Often the same arguments made by the Westboro Church when they protest at a fallen soldier's funeral are the same arguments made for two little words in the Pledge of Allegiance. If religion is the reason, then we need to recognize what we were truly founded on--a respect for the fact that not everyone follows the same religion. That is our First Amendment.
Recognize that "under God" doesn't work for everyone. Some might believe in Mother Nature, some may believe in a higher power but don't refer to that power as "God", and still some might believe "ashes to ashes; dust to dust". We don't have to agree. We just have to recognize that our fellow Americans don't have to agree and we don't have the right to "force" them to. We are not "come here to play Jesus". Time we recognize we are "one" not in spite of our differences, but because we are allowed our differences.
"We're not the same but we get to carry each other."
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