The Hard Words

It seems these days that no one wants to say the hard words or to ask the hard questions.

Oh, I don't mean that people won't say what's on their minds or even that people won’t say in public what should only be said in private. But rather…people seem to shy away from saying the truly hard things...things about life and truth. Words about personal responsibility and the cost of citizenship. Words about the proper use and function of sex and marriage; or words about how abortion is the taking of an innocent human life, or how choices really do matter.

I find myself wondering if it felt any different for Betsy and Corrie tenBoom as they hid Jews from the Nazi army; or if it felt weird for Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he took a stand against Hitler. I hear more contemporary voices crying out to "ask not what my government can do for me, but rather what can I do for my government?" Oh don't get me wrong, I know that's not exactly what President Kennedy said, but it does rather reflect what he meant.

Then comparatively speaking Dr. King asked that neither he nor his children be judged by the color of their skins, but by the content of their character. And here we are today--at our enlightened state--and all we can talk about is hyphenated this and hyphenated that.

Whatever happened to us? Is that a hard question too?

Perhaps its time we all begin to ask the hard questions, to say the hard words. Truth matters. Life matters. We matter.