My Friend the Hero

Imagine, for a moment, that you are walking down the sidewalk in your town. You are walking, perhaps listening to some music, or maybe you are practically skipping with joy at the beautiful day around you.

As you walk on, you hear a shout. Naturally, you look over, and you are appalled by what you see. Across the street, there is an able-bodied man punching another man in a wheel chair. This man is physically abusing a person who is not even free to run away. As you see this happening, all feelings of joy vanish and are replaced by some of the most acute anger you have ever felt.

Suddenly, without consciously deciding to do so, you yell, "Get the hell away from him!" You begin to run across the street, and the man says, "Stay out of this, this has nothing to do with you." The man in the wheel chair is trying to get away and gives you a pleading look. You say, "No. This is unacceptable. This is not how you want to treat this man."

Harness the rage you would feel towards the evil of a man who finds it necessary to physically abuse a person in a wheelchair. Try to truly understand that feeling. Can you imagine such evil? What if the man was merely yelling in a violent way at the person in the wheelchair? Wouldn't that fill you with a feeling of absolute disgust?

Now switch scenes.

You are on a bus on the way to work. The bus stops, and a woman gets on with her children. You notice that she is angry with her children and seems to be constantly scolding them. There is a great deal of malevolence in her voice. You start to feel very uncomfortable.

Next, you hear a crack. The woman had has just slapped one of her children across the face. You feel sick, but you do nothing. You get off the bus, and for the rest of the day, you can't quite make yourself feel comfortable. The entire day at work is filled with the memory of that woman hitting the child. There were so many people on the bus, and no one said anything.

Then suddenly, in a flash, you realize that if that child was a man in a wheelchair, you would have never sat silent. You would have sprung into action to try to help the clearly less able human being.

Then you nearly fall over when you realize the simple truth: that man in the wheelchair is infinitely more free than the child on the bus. The man in the wheelchair can try to get away; the man in the wheelchair can call the police; the man in the wheelchair can yell for help and not have to worry about being beaten when he gets home. The man in the wheelchair is not dependent on the person who is beating him.

"Why did I just sit there while that woman hit the child?"

Greg Minton my friend and an absolute hero, decided to put an end to the silence that we all we all try to justify by saying that it is noise.

He sat on that bus a week ago and saw the woman slap her child. He said bravely:

"Whoa, no. What are you doing?"

"Whatcha tryin' to say? You tryin' to tell me what I can and can't do to my child?"

"You just slapped your daughter across the face. That is unacceptable."

"She is my child, and I will do whatever I want to her! I bet you never got a good woopin', did you?"

After some silence, he said: "You do not want to be that mother for your children. You just don't."

The woman at this point attempted to get him kicked off of the bus for "running his mouth" but Greg decided to get off anyway to avoid being around that reprehensible woman any longer. On his way out he saw one of the teary eyed children give him a shy smile.

This type of bravery will change the world, my friends. Greg, I feel an incredible amount of admiration for your willingness to stand up for the victims of evil. You helped bring light to the fact that their mother is not virtuous, but instead an immoral and power hungry tyrant. You have inspired me to stand up for those who are not free to fight back.

My friends, children are not property.

Children are the most wonderfully curious and rational individuals on the planet...but they are also dependent on adults in their early years. What type of sadistic and evil person would think that the best way to teach children about the world is to show them a way to treat defenseless people is to use violence? WHAT TYPE OF MADNESS IS THAT?

Why is it that we would leap into action to help the man in the wheelchair, but not to help the child who may end up spending his/her whole life believing that human beings are evil and need to use violence against the weak and defenseless? Do you see how this is at the core of the world's pain? The human race is in agony for what? A power trip?

We must stop abusing children. They are the light that will change the world, but we must be responsible and not beat it out of them. War, genocide, incarceration for non-violent crimes, endless taxation, priests who molest children, politicians who send young men and women to die...do you really believe that any of this would exist if children were treated with rational curiosity instead of VIOLENCE?

No. Enough. Stop standing back and watching another child's life get ruined.

That shy smile that the child gave Greg is an indication that freedom is what the child longs for, not abuse. There is hope yet, but we MUST stop treating children as slaves and as property.

All of this lead me to realize what makes a hero.

A hero is not someone who goes out and kills people at the order of some old men in Washington.

A hero is not someone who kidnaps and incarcerates people for smoking a plant.

A hero is not someone who tells children that they will be good boys and girls if they just listen to Jesus.

A hero is not someone who tells children that family is the highest virtue despite how they actually treat you.

No.

A hero breaks the silence.