Marriage and child-rearing can be stressful situations indeed, the conspicuous items of this life can be appealing, even intoxicating, but are they the causes for the seeming rush to the mischief and murder that is afoot among many of the supposed enlightened?

In the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area and across this nation, there is a plague of priests and ministers of all faiths stealing and defrauding parishioners of their hard earned money (in the name of the Lord), taking their sons, daughters, even wives, and husbands for sexual objects to arrest their unbridled desires (in their own names).

Then there are the doctors and parents who are killing their children and killing others to assuage whatever adversions that are aflame in them and then turning inward, as they take their own lives.

Cases so close to home in the Oakland/San Francisco Bay Area are repeated throughout this nation and in many parts of the world. Well to do, highly educated, and supposedly enlightened individuals are behaving in ways that defy their enlightenment and stations in life. Why?

Why would a priest of God take an altar boy and use him for sexual pleasures? Why would a 58-year old minister take a 15-year old girl for his carnal desires? Why would a man of the cloth con faithful, yet poor members of a church out of their hard earned money and use the Bible as an instrument of con? These acts are multiplied throughout this nation and beyond.

Are these not men of conscience, men of morals, men of the cloth? Are they not equipped with greater enlightenment? Isn't there a higher calling and sensitivity that they are obligated to function by? That is the assumption and culture many of us have operated under for these many years.

Still, there are the doctors and the highly educated who are in socially trusted positions and are socially trusted individuals. They too are assumed to have higher callings and greater ethics. Yet, just last week, two female medical doctors, supposedly persons of enlightenment, took up weapons and killed their children and the enlightenment we supposed of them--a pediatrician and an obstetrician, killed their children for no apparent reason.

Then there is also the case of Dr. Guyang M. Huang, a drug researcher, who planned and carried out the killing of a former supervisor who had terminated him; then he killed himself. And this too is repeated across the nation.

Why are these men and women of responsibility failing to live up to the obligations of their stations in life? Surely, to whom much is given, much is required; but this once understood ethical and moral code seems to have fallen into disrepute, as there is an abandonment of that principle in many who have the trust and respect of society.

Could it be that the vain glory of the Me-first, I deserve it, I'm worth it, Get all the gusto out of life, and similar superficial philosophies have taken hold of all, even of those who are supposedly out of Plato's Den and into the sunlight of truth?

Of all people, the men of the cloth supposedly bathe in the Son-light of God, yet many of them, too, have bought into these superficial philosophies and are behaving as con artists behave in their rush to mischief, and some even to murder.

This rape of parishioners is a particularly reprehensible problem in many urban Black churches. Too often, poor members are seduced in the name of the Lord to give to wealthy ministers money they cannot afford, and these are individuals already rich off the backs of the poor. And if that is not bad enough, many are taking the poor's children for their own carnal delights. This is the same type of debauchery the Rev. Jonathan Swift wrote against in his brilliant Modest Proposal--the rich British were living and thriving off the poor of Ireland. But as the rich British had no shame, the rich ministers have no shame; instead, they take a perverse pride in touting their ill-gotten gains off the poor.

The idea that one must have it all is a notion of hedonism that is alien to the refined and morally astute--or it was once thought to be. But maybe these are not refined or morally astute after all, but just individuals who have taken on a cloak of respectability to aid in their shameful acts, and they are still as unwashed as the common, self-absorbed criminal.

How can the poor protect themselves from these hustlers & hooligans? The people have to be awakened to the fact that trust must be earned and remain conditional for ALL. Second, if one in a trusted position breaches the protocols of that position, he/she must be singled out and identified or such a person will continue misbehaving among those uninformed of his/her activities, and such a one will function as a stabilized mutation that continues and even reproduces after its own kind.

There is the idea among many that this life is all the life they will ever see and know, so one must get all now because there is nothing hereafter--whether justice or retribution. This idea is part of the culture of hedonism. But Dr. King's words still ring in my ears: "The moral arch of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Somehow this truth is a guide to me, and I am restrained by it.

In reading the words of Dr. Ellen Feinberg, the pediatrician who killed her children--"I killed my children and want to be killed by the police."--somehow it seems as if she is assuming justice will be done if she is killed. This is her idea of an eye for an eye justice--an old Jewish Mosaic code. And this is an idea of many; no doubt it was Dr. Haung's idea, as he committed suicide after killing another human being. But is this notion of justice really justice? Wasn't the code really saying that an eye is enough for an eye; a tooth is enough for a tooth? And that is not really about justice, as Dr. Feinberg implied, especially under her set of circumstances.

A 43- years mother who has lived and experienced the beauty as well as the pain of creation and life, takes the life of a 10-year old son--a son who has not yet learned his right hand from his left, as it were; a son who has not lived long enough to experience the joys and pains of life--its beauty; a son who has had no opportunity to realize his potential, as she did. Can the mere killing of that son's killer be considered justice? It is an idea supposed by many .

But suppose again that Martin Luther King, Jr., is right; that the arch of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Would those who commit havoc on others, stifle the growth and development of another life, disallow another to experience his/her potential, etc., have justice satisfied with the mere taking of their lives? Or would the continuum of morality have to exceed their lives that justice could be done?

And wouldn't one, therefore, also have to suppose that there is more to this idea of life and justice than is seen in our physical lives here in this sphere? Those who engage in artrocities and commit suicide to avoid the consequences may well be surprised to find that justice travels beyond the grave.

The one who fancies to rush to mischief and murder as soon as things get a bit adverse in this life, supposing that this is all of it, may be wise to be more careful, lest justice travels beyond the grave to wherever that person finds himself or is found by another.

Those of greater light must behave in ways that betoken that greater light and not descend to the base elements that are in all our natures.[]
Frank A. Jones

Home