Selfishness

One of the more interesting books available to me on audiotape is Ayn Rand's “Atlas Shrugged.” This book is completely opposite my deeply held thinking on right and wrong, of living a selfless life. Unlike Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU, who desired a community of government dependents, Atlas Shrugged promotes the creature more than the creator, the highest aim of the universe is the magnificence of man. That man is capable of doing anything himself, not dependent on anyone else, especially divine providence. Her monument to goodness bounds and rebounds to a statue of man.

Rand skipped the most important events in the history of the world, our first parents in the Garden of Eden, and how easily they were conquered with forbidden fruit from the “no-no” tree. God had given them a beautiful garden to enjoy. Everything about the garden, every tree, every flower, every mountain, every valley, all, along with his very presence. But, God wanted to establish, then and now, that He is Boss, He is still in charge, He is sovereign. God told them they could enjoy everything but one tree, the “no-no” tree. But, as with Rand, and man's desire to do something great, to have superior knowledge, Eve was easily enticed by a most attractive serpent who immediately caused doubts in her thinking. The cartoonist has been so enabling, picturing the devil with a pitchfork, being so unattractive. You can be sure that the serpent was very attractive, very engaging, very articulate, very persuasive. It was then and is now. Sin is so attractive. And, history, every psychology book, every human experience shows us in living color, that we reap what we sow.

Starting in the first chapter of God's word, every animal, every plant, created “after His kind.” From that day till this day, everything “after His kind” You do not get wheat from corn, string beans from alfalfa, a hippopotamus from an elephant, a poodle from a hound, you reap what you sow. If you sow to destruction, you will get destruction, if you live a miserable selfish life, you will get a miserable selfish life.

Peace and joy only comes from above. Only God can redeem one from a destructive life. A Christ filled heart, and twenty inches away a God filled mind, will give servitude, not selfishness. With God, everything is possible, without God, nothing is possible. With God the impossible becomes possible and the possible becomes impossible. I mean by that, possible catastrophe, protected by a hedge of contentment.

One of the most despicable acts of Hitler's Nazi Socialist crackpots was scientific experiments with human beings. Dr. Mengele and his ilk, almost as bad as the Tuskegee experiments, all this over one-half century ago. Now we learn, the most selfish, despicable, anti-human experimentation is still going on by some who would call themselves scientists on innocent people in Guatemala. “From 1946 to 1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalans — prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers — with venereal diseases in what was meant as an effort to test the effectiveness of penicillin.” When are we going to learn that even in the 20th and 21st century, the eugenics craze still surrounds us. Three quarters of a million people are still killed by bad diagnoses and poor procedures in so called sophisticated health facilities. This is more than killed by all terrorists.

The worst food in America is found in hospitals, many unsanitary, uncaring procedures. Think of the drugs and other essentials to life recalled each year by the FDA. Now, they want to control our food supply entirely... even genetically modified fish. It starts with Salmon, who knows where it will end. Eighteen percent of all beef comes from abroad, is not inspected, like fast fed salmon, feedlot fed beef, chemicals leached from plastic, GMO's all leading to our rapid demise.

Endometriosis affects 117 million women in the world, even those where genealogical care is available, the stigma keeps most from getting care. 4,000 children die in Africa from diarrhea every day. African parents have a stigma about their sanitary practices, hand washing, toilet facilities. The teaching of sanitation to mothers is the single most important item in Africa, perhaps more important than potable water supplies. They simply do not know, but even in the land of the free and home of the brave, we do not know what is going on with our care. Particularly, veterans hospitals, welfare clinics.

I have described this experience in other commentaries. Many have said I did not see what I saw. My father, had a good friend, who was on the staff at the North Carolina Hospital for the Negro Insane, Goldsboro, NC (now called Cherry Hospital named after former NC governor Greg Cherry). As a child, I would go there with my father. The hospital buildings were the old military type barrack buildings, called cantonments, before the day of air conditioning, with porches built around the interior. On these porches were tied the inmates. Their hands were tied to the ceiling. There they stayed all day, defecating on their feet. Those who could do anything were used in the large agricultural farm fields. I saw a supervisor, on a horse, riding around with a whip. If one were not working hard enough, they would get a lash. Such was the rehabilitation practices of government just seventy years ago. In thinking of Mengele, Tuskegee, Guatemala, Goldsboro, have things improved very much? I believe such goes on in government facilities to this very day.

Even in the mid 20th century, as an Army medical officer stationed at an Army hospital, at the post-stockade (prison for soldiers), in making sick call, I would find dirty, smelly, men and women in jail for some minor offense, having lost all personal hygienic care, just surviving. They had ceased to care about anything. Sitting in front of me, unkempt, bedraggled by the world, yet owned by their own country, I would look straight at one and say, “God loves you. You were made in his very image. You need to clean up. Fix up. Rise up. You are better than this.” Few of us know from where these children come from, the burden they carry, the baggage they carry. Their bitterness towards their past, toward everything of that day, would only become more desperate in their future if not helped. Their selfishness cannot be excused by our selfishness. The job is so great, the challenge is so daring, but some way, some how, the spirit of selflessness is the only thing that will bring relief in the world.

General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, one Christmas only used one word in the telegram to the thousands of Salvation Army volunteers around the world, “Others.”

“Others, Lord, yeah others. Let this my motto be – Help me to live for others, That I may live like thee.”