An open Letter to the President of the United States

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

 

Dear Mr. President,

If you ever get to read this letter, I expect you will consider me a Non-Entity from a foreign country whom you can afford to ignore. And you are right !  Nevertheless, what this Non-Entity has to say is shared by a great many people he knows.

When we hear of your plans to build a wall to seal off the “back door” to your country, to use more barbed wire and to send in the Army, all in the cause of repelling the poor who come knocking on your door for relief, we feel it dramatically portrays the shattered nature of western culture and its Christian values, without the provision of anything to replace it.

To repel the poor in this way is to reject belief in the brotherhood of humankind which itself depends on the universal fatherhood of God. It makes of you an atheist: no matter how often you may ask God to bless America, or however many “prayer breakfasts” you attend, your actions belie such words and you become no better than many other world leaders whose ruling practices are violent to say the least.  When Jesus Christ was asked which was the greatest commandment of all, he replied: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. . . . . The second resembles it: You must love your neighbour as yourself”. (Matt 22, 37-39).

But we also fear for you personally, when we hear you, without concrete names and evidence, mock at least some of these poor as being “wicked” and “evil” people. Listen to these words from the Book of Proverbs (17,5): “To mock the poor is to insult the Creator”. What foolhardiness to do so !  And when you refuse them assistance, know what the Book of Sirach has to say: “A meagre diet is the very life of the poor, to deprive them of it is to commit murder”. (Sir 34, 21). You could not do these things if you had the slightest belief in God left in you. And the result is a world speeding ever more  towards confrontation and destruction.

Yes, Mr. President, we do hear your justifiable complaint that the international community has unfairly expected the United States to provide the solutions to all the world’s humanitarian challenges. But your exalted position is one of unprecedented power and influence in the international community; you can require it to share the burden with you; and indeed you did do so in regard to defence issues. Why not now for the poor ?

St. John’s message to the church in ancient Laodicea might well be directed to you and your country now: “You say to yourself: I am rich, I have made a fortune and have everything I want, never realising that you are pitiably poor, and blind and naked too. I warn you, buy from me the gold that has been tested in the fire to make you truly rich, and white robes to clothe you and hide your shameful nakedness, and ointment to put on your eyes to enable you to see. (Rev 3, 17-18). I guess you are not a reader of the Bible or inclined to a love of poetry. But maybe the evocative words of Louise Minnie Haskins, may touch your soul:

I said to the man who stood at the Gate of the Year,

‘Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown’.

And he replied, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way’.

Come back to God, Mr. President, and save the world !