The United States is being strangled by its inability to move away from the need to be “better than”. It shows up in every thing we do. It shows up in our identity. It shows up in even the little things. There is that very ugly push to which we respond with a verbal denial if questioned.
However, so is the rest of the world. In many different ways money, power, status, birthright and more are totally institutionalized. Groups fight for ascendancy. One group wants “better than” to remain and to be more defined using violence and anything else needed to maintain. Another group fights constantly for civil rights – equality and diversity are seen by them as the goal. They fight for the right for everyone to be “free and equal”.
Racism, bigotry, the “better than” sickness pervades everything and has not been removable for hundreds of years.
There had to be a “better than” mentality for slavery to develop. There had to be a “better than” mentality for colonialism to thrive and keep so many in bondage for so long.
What has been the one through line which created, maintained and justified one person better than another; one group better than another; one country better than another; one family better than another? Where did we get the example to follow and the group to look up to? How is that maintained in our society today?
That through line starts and ends with royalty. Every organization in which we work, grow, expand, use to attempt to solve humanities problems is patterned after “royalty.” – the Royal Family is the prototype for oppression and the oppressor which pervades all of our lives. We find ourselves someplace in the triangle with “royalty” at the top.
Once upon a time we had monarchies all over the world – even extending back a few thousand years to the Egyptians. African countries had kings and queens. The Chinese had Emperors. Some countries still have their monarchies to which we must pay obeisance. There is a particular way to address royalty. One must not touch royalty in some countries. One must curtsy to royalty to show ones inferiority to them. All of which we accept – act on – and don’t give another thought to how that has made all of our lives horrendous.
An entire industry is forming around Meaghan Markle because she brought African Americans into the royal family in England and had children who are now “royals” and black. The hatred being dumped on her is unbelievable that human beings could be so crude. English royalty – white by definition – has been sullied by these African American children. Is the definition of black still – 2% black means you are black? Once upon a time, not too long ago in America – if you were living in a “white” neighborhood and were found to have even 2% black you had to pack up and move out of that neighborhood. So now we have people arguing back and forth about how Meaghan’s children are not “royals.”
The English Royal Family has brought untold suffering into the world, which we try to ignore and which Americans act as though they are above the fray, but when you look at those who came to settle these United States and who brought their way of being with them you can see the hangover from the royal dynasties from which they have come.
It is time for us to give up this play and face the world with courage, morality, freedom of spirit where we are all created equal with our individual quirks, sometimes called our shared humanity.
Isn’t it time for us to move past this into a world full of real love. We can’t even talk about love without sex sneaking in. Can’t we walk away from and drop the chains we have put on ourselves into a better life which is the one God really intended? The United States is suffering because of Donald Trump who wants to be king – over all, but in reality his spirit is so shrunken and imbued with evil you can hear and see it as though it is a foul cloud surrounding him. And we have Jeff Bezos who sees himself on the good side, but who wants to be emperor of the world and is moving to take all the assets of the world into his own sphere of living robbing the rest of us of much we would have if he did not strip away the billions he is doing daily. And there are more – the Gates of the world who was beholden to IBM for his fortune – and the Elton Musks and so many more. All feeling justified in what they are doing to this world and acting and living as though they were royalty. The pattern is set and used many times over.
Love is the answer. Finding it is almost impossible. We have been so infected with the sting of royalty we have conflated love and sex and most can’t seem to experience love without sex intervening. Isn’t that what royalty brings to us and has brought into this world? What did it mean when conflating love and sex was institutionalized by royalty to the extent of having a group of lesser royals gather around the bed to watch when the “top royals” were having sex?” That is no longer true, but it was true long enough to have the love/sex connection structured into societies that followed.
Christians have been trying to live the Gospel and understand what it means to say God is Love! We get that so confused we have even taken the saints and clothed them in crowns of diamonds, rubies and all of the rocks in the world to which we have given value.
We are so caught up in the royalty figures we have set up to worship we have projected God, the angels, the people who have died, onto the sky all dressed in incredible rainmnent that we wish we had on earth to wear and put different kinds of crowns on their heads depending upon the status we have given them in the “Heavenly Royal Family.”
It is time for royalty to abdicate and become man and woman made in the image of God. Those we acknowledge as royalty with all the trimmings and those who have acknowledged themselves as royalty and are busy acquiring all the trimmings to make themselves over in the image of royalty must take another look at their “contribution” to society and their ancestors distortion of what once was God’s amazing gift.
