Richard Amiel McGough
03-29-2008, 03:01 PM
When I first heard folks attempting to defend Jeremiah Wright by saying that his incendiary comments were "taken out of context" I thought to myself "Yeah, right! The clips quoted whole paragraphs! There's no way they could be taken out of context."
But I was wrong.
I have watched the sermon with the infamous "chickens coming home to roost" quote that Wright gave immediately after 9/11 and my view of him has radically changed from what I got by watching the OUT OF CONTEXT soundbites endlessly repeated by the Main Stream Media. Here is how Wright began his sermon:
Every public service of worship I have heard about so far in the wake of the American tragedy has had in its prayers and in its preachments sympathy and compassion for those who were killed and for their families, and God’s guidance upon the selected presidents and our war-machine as they do what they got to do - pay backs. There’s a move in Psalm 137 from thoughts of paying tithes to thoughts of paying back. Move if you will from worship to war. A move, in other words from the worship of the God of creation to a war against whom God has created. And I want you to notice, very carefully, the next move. One of the reasons this psalm is rarely read in its entirety. Because it is a move that spotlights the insanity of the cycle of violence and the cycle of hatred.
Look at verse 9, look at verse 9, look at verse 9, “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rocks." The people of faith by the rivers of Babylon. How shall we sing the Lord’s song if I forget thee, O Jerusalem ...
This is why I chose the words "outrageous irony" in the title of this thread. Jeremiah Wright based his sermon on a verse from the Bible that sounds outrageously unacceptable when read out of context or without a full Biblical understanding. Does the Bible really say "Happy shall he be that take your little ones" - INNOCENT BABIES!- and "dash them against the rocks"? Yes it does! What then could it possibly mean? Wright gives us that answer with clarity and deep biblical understanding:
The people of faith have moved from the hatred of armed enemies, these soldiers who captured the king, who slaughtered his son, they put his eyes out, the soldiers who sacked the city, burned the towns, burned the temples, burned the towers, and moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocence, the babies, the babies .
“Blessed are they who dash your baby’s brains against a rock.” And that, my beloveds, is a dangerous place to be. Yet, that is where the people of faith are in 551 BC and that is where the people of faith are, far too many people of faith are in 2001 AD. We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocence. We want revenge. We want paybacks and we don’t care who gets hurt in the process.
Here Wright is preaching against revenge, even as he shows how the Bible accurately records sinful man's desire for revenge after seeing the destruction of his people in 551 BC. In other words, Wright is here making the stories of the Bible come alive in relevance to the problems his people face today in the modern world, and he "redeems" a text that is in itself unacceptable, and uses it to lead his flock to the higher ground, beyond the "cycle of violence and the cycle of hatred." He was leading his flock away from the all too human reaction of hatred and revenge that was sure to arise in the wake of the 9/11 attack.
This view is just a little different than what the millions of people are being led to believe by the MSM.
Write then began to preach about his personal relationship with the Lord:
Now I-I-I asked the Lord, “What should our response be in light of such an unthinkable act?” But before I share with you what the Lord showed me, I want to give you one of my little faith footnotes. Visitors often get faith footnotes, so that our members don’t lose sight of the big picture. Let me give you a little faith foot note. Turn your neighbors say “faith footnote.”
Now here is more irony - the soundbites were taken out of context from this "faith footnote" which he gave so that people wouldn't "lost sight of the big picture"!
I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox news. This is a White man and he was upsetting the Fox news commentators to no end. He pointed out. You see him John? A White man he pointed out –an Ambassador! He pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true. America’s Chickens are coming home to roost!
This is the source of the infamous quote highlight in the soundbite.
Wright then enters into his condemnation of a long list of real or imagined crimes found in our American history:
We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Aroawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism! We bombed Grenada and killed innocent babies, non military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers. We bombed Gadhaffi’s home and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against a rock! We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy. Killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye! Kids playing in the playground , mothers picking up children after school, civilians – not soldiers – people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans, and now we are indignant??? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yard! America’s chickers are coming home to roost!
The red text is what I have seen most frequently played by the MSM. It reveals Wright's far-left leaning bias against the American government that I think is a very big error, though it is not entirely divorced from historical truth. But it also reveals the bias of the MSM who deliberately SNIPPED the quote at the exact spot where Wright changed his tone, bringing it back down to the conversational level to teach his flock the way of peace:
Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism. A White Ambassador said that y’all not a Black Militant. Not a Reverend who preaches about racism. An Ambassador whose eyes are wide open, and who’s trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said that the people we are wounded don’t have the military capability we have but they do have individuals who are willing to die and to take thousands with them and we need to come to grips with that. Let me stop my faith footnote right there and ask you to think about that over the next few weeks if God grants us that many days. Turn back to your neighbor say “footnote is over.”
Not only did they rip the soundbite out of the context of a "footnote" to the whole sermon, but they SNIPPED the soundbite at the point that revealed the pastoral heart of Reverend Wright! That's just not right! Indeed, that's not even "Wright" - for they really did take him out of context with what appears to be a willful attempt to deceive. He was not preaching hatred. On the contrary, he was preaching against hatred,
Wright then returned from his "faith footnote" to the question he had asked the Lord:
Now, now come on back to my question to the Lord. “What should our response be right now in light of such an unthinkable act?”
I asked the Lord that question Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I was stuck in Newark New Jersey. No flights were leaving LaGuardia, JFK, or Newark airport. On the day the FAA opened up the airports to bring into the cities of destination because those flights had been diverted, because of the hijacking, a scare in New York closed all three airports and I couldn’t even get here for Mr. Radford’s funeral. And I asked God, “What should our response be?”
I saw pictures of the incredible. People jumping from the 110th floor. People jumping from the roof cause the stairwells above the 9th floor were gone. No more. Black people jumping to a certain death. People holding hands jumping. People on fire jumping. And I asked the Lord, “What should our response be?”
I read what the people of faith felt in 551 BC. But this is a different time. This is a different enemy. This is a different world. This is a different terror. This is a different reality. “What should our response be?” And the Lord showed me three things. Let me share them with you quickly and I’m going to leave you alone to think about the faith footnote.
Number one. The Lord showed me that this is a time for self-examination. As I sat 900 miles away from my family and my community of faith, two months after my own father’s death, God showed me that this is a time for me to examine my relationship with God; my own relationship with God, my personal relationship with God. I submit to you that it is the same for you. Folks flocked to the church in New Jersey last week. You know that fox hole religion syndrome kicked in, that emergency cord religion; you know that old red box cord to pull in case of emergency, it showed up full force. Folk who ain’t thought about coming to church for years were in church last week. I heard that mid week prayer services all over this country, which are poorly attended 51 weeks of the year, were jammed packed all over the nation the week of the hijacking the 52nd week filled full. But the Lord said, “This ani’t the time for you to be examining other folks’ relationship, this is a time of self-examination”
The Lord said to me, “How is our relationship doing Jeremiah? How often do you talk to me personally? How often do you let Me talk to you privately? How much time do you spend trying to get right with Me, or do you spend all your time trying to get other folk right?”
This is a time for me to examine my own relationship with God. Is it real or is it fake? Is it forever or is it for show? Is it something you do for the sake of the public or is it something that you do for the sake of eternity? This is a time to examine my own and a time for you to examine your own relationship with God. Self-examination. . .
To really get a feel for the true meaning of Wright's sermon, you need to listen to how he delivered it. A video is available here:
http://alternet.org/blogs/mediaculture/80481/
Now I still think Rev. Wright has some "issues" with his paranoid idea that the US Government invented HIV to kill blacks, and he has "issues" with his unbalanced view of American history, as if we were the villains in every conflict. But that's a far cry from the "raving madman" that is portrayed in the OUT OF CONTEXT presentation of his sermons.
It is no less outrageous to judge the whole Bible in light of Psalm 137:9 than to judge the 30+ year career of Jeremiah Wright in terms of those soundbites.
I repent of many of the uninformed and igorant comments I made concerning him.
The MSM owes Jeremiah Wright a full hour segments airing his full sermons in context followed by a discussion group. Anything less is criminial mass misinformation.
Richard
But I was wrong.
I have watched the sermon with the infamous "chickens coming home to roost" quote that Wright gave immediately after 9/11 and my view of him has radically changed from what I got by watching the OUT OF CONTEXT soundbites endlessly repeated by the Main Stream Media. Here is how Wright began his sermon:
Every public service of worship I have heard about so far in the wake of the American tragedy has had in its prayers and in its preachments sympathy and compassion for those who were killed and for their families, and God’s guidance upon the selected presidents and our war-machine as they do what they got to do - pay backs. There’s a move in Psalm 137 from thoughts of paying tithes to thoughts of paying back. Move if you will from worship to war. A move, in other words from the worship of the God of creation to a war against whom God has created. And I want you to notice, very carefully, the next move. One of the reasons this psalm is rarely read in its entirety. Because it is a move that spotlights the insanity of the cycle of violence and the cycle of hatred.
Look at verse 9, look at verse 9, look at verse 9, “Happy shall they be who take your little ones and dash them against the rocks." The people of faith by the rivers of Babylon. How shall we sing the Lord’s song if I forget thee, O Jerusalem ...
This is why I chose the words "outrageous irony" in the title of this thread. Jeremiah Wright based his sermon on a verse from the Bible that sounds outrageously unacceptable when read out of context or without a full Biblical understanding. Does the Bible really say "Happy shall he be that take your little ones" - INNOCENT BABIES!- and "dash them against the rocks"? Yes it does! What then could it possibly mean? Wright gives us that answer with clarity and deep biblical understanding:
The people of faith have moved from the hatred of armed enemies, these soldiers who captured the king, who slaughtered his son, they put his eyes out, the soldiers who sacked the city, burned the towns, burned the temples, burned the towers, and moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocence, the babies, the babies .
“Blessed are they who dash your baby’s brains against a rock.” And that, my beloveds, is a dangerous place to be. Yet, that is where the people of faith are in 551 BC and that is where the people of faith are, far too many people of faith are in 2001 AD. We have moved from the hatred of armed enemies to the hatred of unarmed innocence. We want revenge. We want paybacks and we don’t care who gets hurt in the process.
Here Wright is preaching against revenge, even as he shows how the Bible accurately records sinful man's desire for revenge after seeing the destruction of his people in 551 BC. In other words, Wright is here making the stories of the Bible come alive in relevance to the problems his people face today in the modern world, and he "redeems" a text that is in itself unacceptable, and uses it to lead his flock to the higher ground, beyond the "cycle of violence and the cycle of hatred." He was leading his flock away from the all too human reaction of hatred and revenge that was sure to arise in the wake of the 9/11 attack.
This view is just a little different than what the millions of people are being led to believe by the MSM.
Write then began to preach about his personal relationship with the Lord:
Now I-I-I asked the Lord, “What should our response be in light of such an unthinkable act?” But before I share with you what the Lord showed me, I want to give you one of my little faith footnotes. Visitors often get faith footnotes, so that our members don’t lose sight of the big picture. Let me give you a little faith foot note. Turn your neighbors say “faith footnote.”
Now here is more irony - the soundbites were taken out of context from this "faith footnote" which he gave so that people wouldn't "lost sight of the big picture"!
I heard Ambassador Peck on an interview yesterday. Did anybody else see him or hear him? He was on Fox news. This is a White man and he was upsetting the Fox news commentators to no end. He pointed out. You see him John? A White man he pointed out –an Ambassador! He pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he got silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true. America’s Chickens are coming home to roost!
This is the source of the infamous quote highlight in the soundbite.
Wright then enters into his condemnation of a long list of real or imagined crimes found in our American history:
We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, the Aroawak, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism! We took Africans from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism! We bombed Grenada and killed innocent babies, non military personnel. We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenagers and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard-working fathers. We bombed Gadhaffi’s home and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against a rock! We bombed Iraq. We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to payback for the attack on our embassy. Killed hundreds of hard-working people; mothers and fathers who left home to go that day, not knowing that they would never get back home. We bombed Hiroshima! We bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye! Kids playing in the playground , mothers picking up children after school, civilians – not soldiers – people just trying to make it day by day. We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans, and now we are indignant??? Because the stuff we have done overseas has now been brought back into our own front yard! America’s chickers are coming home to roost!
The red text is what I have seen most frequently played by the MSM. It reveals Wright's far-left leaning bias against the American government that I think is a very big error, though it is not entirely divorced from historical truth. But it also reveals the bias of the MSM who deliberately SNIPPED the quote at the exact spot where Wright changed his tone, bringing it back down to the conversational level to teach his flock the way of peace:
Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred and terrorism begets terrorism. A White Ambassador said that y’all not a Black Militant. Not a Reverend who preaches about racism. An Ambassador whose eyes are wide open, and who’s trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised. The ambassador said that the people we are wounded don’t have the military capability we have but they do have individuals who are willing to die and to take thousands with them and we need to come to grips with that. Let me stop my faith footnote right there and ask you to think about that over the next few weeks if God grants us that many days. Turn back to your neighbor say “footnote is over.”
Not only did they rip the soundbite out of the context of a "footnote" to the whole sermon, but they SNIPPED the soundbite at the point that revealed the pastoral heart of Reverend Wright! That's just not right! Indeed, that's not even "Wright" - for they really did take him out of context with what appears to be a willful attempt to deceive. He was not preaching hatred. On the contrary, he was preaching against hatred,
Wright then returned from his "faith footnote" to the question he had asked the Lord:
Now, now come on back to my question to the Lord. “What should our response be right now in light of such an unthinkable act?”
I asked the Lord that question Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I was stuck in Newark New Jersey. No flights were leaving LaGuardia, JFK, or Newark airport. On the day the FAA opened up the airports to bring into the cities of destination because those flights had been diverted, because of the hijacking, a scare in New York closed all three airports and I couldn’t even get here for Mr. Radford’s funeral. And I asked God, “What should our response be?”
I saw pictures of the incredible. People jumping from the 110th floor. People jumping from the roof cause the stairwells above the 9th floor were gone. No more. Black people jumping to a certain death. People holding hands jumping. People on fire jumping. And I asked the Lord, “What should our response be?”
I read what the people of faith felt in 551 BC. But this is a different time. This is a different enemy. This is a different world. This is a different terror. This is a different reality. “What should our response be?” And the Lord showed me three things. Let me share them with you quickly and I’m going to leave you alone to think about the faith footnote.
Number one. The Lord showed me that this is a time for self-examination. As I sat 900 miles away from my family and my community of faith, two months after my own father’s death, God showed me that this is a time for me to examine my relationship with God; my own relationship with God, my personal relationship with God. I submit to you that it is the same for you. Folks flocked to the church in New Jersey last week. You know that fox hole religion syndrome kicked in, that emergency cord religion; you know that old red box cord to pull in case of emergency, it showed up full force. Folk who ain’t thought about coming to church for years were in church last week. I heard that mid week prayer services all over this country, which are poorly attended 51 weeks of the year, were jammed packed all over the nation the week of the hijacking the 52nd week filled full. But the Lord said, “This ani’t the time for you to be examining other folks’ relationship, this is a time of self-examination”
The Lord said to me, “How is our relationship doing Jeremiah? How often do you talk to me personally? How often do you let Me talk to you privately? How much time do you spend trying to get right with Me, or do you spend all your time trying to get other folk right?”
This is a time for me to examine my own relationship with God. Is it real or is it fake? Is it forever or is it for show? Is it something you do for the sake of the public or is it something that you do for the sake of eternity? This is a time to examine my own and a time for you to examine your own relationship with God. Self-examination. . .
To really get a feel for the true meaning of Wright's sermon, you need to listen to how he delivered it. A video is available here:
http://alternet.org/blogs/mediaculture/80481/
Now I still think Rev. Wright has some "issues" with his paranoid idea that the US Government invented HIV to kill blacks, and he has "issues" with his unbalanced view of American history, as if we were the villains in every conflict. But that's a far cry from the "raving madman" that is portrayed in the OUT OF CONTEXT presentation of his sermons.
It is no less outrageous to judge the whole Bible in light of Psalm 137:9 than to judge the 30+ year career of Jeremiah Wright in terms of those soundbites.
I repent of many of the uninformed and igorant comments I made concerning him.
The MSM owes Jeremiah Wright a full hour segments airing his full sermons in context followed by a discussion group. Anything less is criminial mass misinformation.
Richard