So That's What You're Worried About?

            Today’s news reports the dismay of high school students who sought help from the Florida legislature after the mass shooting at their high school.  The legislators refused to debate a ban on automatic weapons, as they took time to pass a resolution to protect teenagers from pornography. What’s their new motto: “Guns don’t f**k people, people f**k people”? 

            Unfortunately the right has no monopoly on misdirected concern, despite their worry about gender neutral bathrooms, sharia law, and leaving teachers unarmed.  The left too can get worked up about really dumb stuff.  Take this one: The author of the wonderful hymn “Standing on the Side of Love” has changed its title to “Answering the Call of Love” out of respect to the physically disabled, and worse yet, his denomination has changed its own campaign to “Siding with Love,” whatever that means.

            Of course, like most hastily thought out responses to any objection, the solution really doesn’t work.  How are the deaf or those who cannot speak going to answer the call of love?  And when will the sensitivity police get to the rest of the hymnal and other songs?  Here are my suggestion for the first works needing purification:

For paraplegics and those using wheelchairs:

·      “Lord of the Dance”

·      “I’ll Walk with God”

·      “The Lord is My Shepherd’ (though I walk through the valley”)

·      “Just a Closer Walk with Thee”

·      “Standing the Need of Prayer”

·      “The Garden”  (“and he walks with me”)

·      “When the Saints Go Marching In” (also note “I looked over Jordan”)

·      “Run Come See Jerusalem”

For the vision or hearing-impaired:

·      “When the Saints Go Marching In” (also note “I looked over Jordan”)

·      “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”

·      “O Little Town of Bethlehem (“how still we see thee lie”)

·      “Jesus we Look to Thee”

And music isn’t the only problem.  What was Jesus thinking when he said “You have eyes and do not see and you have ears and you do not hear,” or "But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear,” or "The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light”?  Or David when he sang “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”? 

I could go on – and I often do:  The daily Hebrew prayer that begins “Hear, O Israel,” the Star-Spangled banner, with its grievous insult, “O say can you see,” and falsely uplifting songs like “Stand By Me,” or the heartlessly blunt “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”

Folks, let’s stop nitpicking.  I want all of us to stand, walk, run, sing, shout, speak out, be watchful, and act in whatever literal or metaphoric way we can against evil, war, violence, and cruelty, and for goodness, peace, and love.  And when we’ve finished those tasks, we can return to vocabulary tests.