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“There are good people”

“But there are good people,” said Aretha, a highly educated African American female, as we began to talk about race relations.

“You’ve to prove yourself. Challenges exist…some have to overcome their biases…but there are good people”

She shared the frustration and need to repeatedly “prove” herself, and the challenge of changing the minds of those who are “good” but loaded with childhood and societal racial biases. Yet, she rejoiced in the truth that there are “good people”, whites and other races, who’re willing to grow and to abandon their biases and stereotypical racial beliefs.

Acknowledging the challenges and occasional frustrations she added, “It’s becoming a comfortable…a good environment” for such a change despite those who refuse to abandon their racial biases, and those who display a show of niceness and racial harmony outwardly but remain inwardly prejudice, racially intolerant, and unchanging.

Her words, reminded me of those of Solomon Northup in his fascinating 1853 memoir “Twelve Years a Slave”. Solomon Northup, a free man born in New York, was kidnapped in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana until a Canadian abolitionist helped secure his return to freedom in 1853.

He endured as a slave twelve years of cotton-picking, hard labor, whipping, and lashing into submission. Solomon was viewed by a brutal “Master Epps” as a property that’s more expensive than a mule, and an “animal worth a thousand dollars.”

“…the sounds of whipping were heard every day on Epps’ plantation, from sundown until lights out.”

  Yet, despite all what he endured from his cruel and sadistic masters, he was gracious to write in 1853 about William Ford, his first “master”, and “young Mistress McCoy”, who treated her slaves with gentleness and kindness, these words:

“In my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford. The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery.^”

“I dwell with delight upon the description of this fair and gentle lady, not only because she inspired me with emotions of gratitude and admiration, but because I would have the reader understand that all slave –owners on Bayou Boeuf are not like Epps, or Tibeats, or Jim Burns. Occasionally can be found, rarely it may be, indeed, a good man like William Ford, or an angel of kindness like young Mistress McCoy.”

Truly, much like Solomon Northup who found nearly 175 years ago “good people” amidst the carnage of slavery, Aretha has also found “good people” today who’re willing to abandon their racial biases, to love, and to grow.

And friend, you and I are meant to be “good people” who choose to let go of our old racial stereotypes and biases. “Good people” who won’t subject others to repeatedly “prove” themselves. Instead, we are to treat others regardless of race, creed, and color with equality, love and respect, the way that we want to be treated.

 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Luke 6:31

Adel G. Hanna. M.D.

Author: Soldier To Soldier Heart to Heart

A Doctor’s Stories from a Military Camp

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“I love you.

Happy Valentine’s Day

My Beloved,”

GOD

“Happy Valentine’s,” said the small Hallmark card I found in my mail box at my first American undergraduate college.

Valentine? I had no idea who was Valentine.

Why would my dear Ghanaian mentor and   friend Kawbena, and his American girlfriend put a card in my mail box wishing me happiness in a day named after a guy called Valentine, I wondered.

“It’s an American thing about showing love to others,” explained my new-found friend Kawbena as he saw my puzzled look. The good man who came to America years before me, and his girlfriend, knew how it felt to be alone without family members and friends. Their Valentine’s card reminded me of my mom and dad’s love from miles and miles away across the ocean.

Many years later, the seeds of love planted in my life by Kawbena and his Christian friends led me into a source of love even greater than my parent’s love;

God’s Perfect Love.

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has  to  do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

1 John 4:18 (NIV)

I will never forget the sudden, relentless fears that gripped the heart of my macho, and self-confident patient. A series of totally unexpected brushes with the law subjected him to legal punishments that agitated his sense of security and blanketed his life with paralyzing fears.

He learnt the hard way that laws are supposed to scare you from breaking them and will quickly bring terror and fear to your life if you ever break them.

Think about the last time lights and police sirens wailed behind your car as you sped up above the speed limit. Where you a little apprehensive, afraid, panicky?

Friend, we obey the law because we fear the punishing consequences of breaking it.

But God knows that it’s not our fear of punishment for breaking His perfect  law that would make us  love and obey Him. He’s fully in our pursuit to love us and not to punish us.

  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39 (NIV)

I pray that not just in Valentines’ Day but in all the days of our lives we’ll find God’s perfect love that’s freely offered to all. God’s love shows us what it means to be truly and genuinely loved.

 Love that liberates us from fears

Love that’s genuine and real in a world where it’s often just a word said from the mouth but not the heart.

 Love that brings us acceptance, value and forgiveness

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

1 Corinthians 13:4-7

Friend, is that the kind of love you’re giving and experiencing:  God’s kind of love.

 “Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you,” God. 

Adel G Hanna, MD

Author:

Soldier to Soldier; Heart to Heart

A Doctor’s Stories from a Military Camp

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