By Lib Campbell

In this season of Thanksgiving and Christmas, good tidings and giving are on many minds, but an online video surfaced on a local television station this week that was the complete opposite of good tidings and giving. 

In North Raleigh, a Hispanic work crew was working on the road or water lines within the right of way of a neighborhood street. A white man came out of his house to scream racist slurs and sling a shovel at them. I don’t know his name, but the people in his church or worksite do. He has to live with the very public racism, anger and threatening behavior he exhibited. We saw his cruelty on TV. There is no plausible deniability here. 

Another online picture by an animal rescuer showed an emaciated boxer from a Wake County town. The rescuer was doubtful the dog could be saved. Cruelty toward humans and animals used to be something more easily hidden. Thankfully, there are cameras in phones and surveillance in public places that record cruel acts for the public to see. Hopefully, the arresting of those who do harm is increasing.

The man with the slinging shovel is supposedly protected under First Amendment free speech. You can’t yell “fire” in a movie theater but screaming insult and slurs to a group of people simply doing their jobs and swinging a shovel at them is OK. The lawyer on television said we can say anything we want, no matter how obnoxious, how threatening or cruel it is to anybody at any time. 

When freedom of speech gives license to bad actors, we have lost the spirit of free speech. There is no question that discourse in America has become more crude and cruel in recent years. Media has devolved, churning disinformation and railing against whatever the “other” in our life is. Don’t ask about regulating hate speech; this is another distortion of First Amendment. Civility, compassion and kindness are only for the “woke.”

Cruelty is the work of the devil. People are drawn into some kind of power play against weaker creatures, like dogs, children, the elderly and the migrant. This is less a social issue than it is a spiritual issue. We are forgetting that we are stewards of creation — all creation, all creatures. 

Egos and inner brokenness carry us to dark places that yield to our most base animal behaviors. To be big in the world, we have the need to control and defeat the weaker. It’s survival of the fittest. This is the machismo way. This is not the way of God. 

We are living a perfect storm. The influence of the church and civic institutions is at an all-time low. People who have no shame are at war with the government, the Constitution and the law. Education is being decimated, both in public schools and colleges. Rights are being stripped. There are many “little fires everywhere.” 

This season is a good time for deep reflection. Self-examination is not a comfortable practice when we are honest with ourselves. There is much ill in the world. We are in a period of forgetting who we are and what our place as human beings is in the world. 

Gratitude is a good starting place. When we give thanks for all who have taught us values and lessons of kindness and generosity, our hearts make a turn. We take a deep breath and begin to remember who we are. We are God’s beloved, set in the world to be caretakers, not flame throwers. We learn to set a big table, welcoming others, not slinging shovels at them. 

In Claire Keegan’s little book, “Small Things Like This,” Bill Furlong lives an ordinary life selling coal and wood. His wife has great religiosity, and his five daughters are growing up with regular little girl dreams. Furlong’s encounter with Sarah, a young woman living and working in a convent laundry, changes his life. Sarah has had a baby out of wedlock. Her penance is a life in the convent doing laundry. At the end of the story, Furlong finds great courage. He sees what is happening inside the laundry, and despite the pushback he knows is coming, rescues Sarah. 

As he is walking Sarah home to his own house, he asks himself, “is there any point in being alive without helping one another? Was it possible to carry on along through all the years, the decades, through an entire life, without being brave enough to go against what was there right in front of you, yet call yourself a Christian, and face yourself in the mirror?” 

May Thanksgiving be a blessing to you and yours. As we ponder the light coming into the world, let us have courage to walk toward it. 

Lib Campbell is a retired Methodist pastor, retreat leader and hosts the website: avirtualchurch.com. She welcomes comments at libcam05@gmail.com.