The Problem with Being the “Chosen One”
David Brooks. It is a not very well-known fact that in the first years after the Israelites arrived in the “promised land”, their government was in the hands of a few men who were called the “judges”. Moses had named the first one and the line continued from there. Nevertheless, there came a moment when the Israelites complained to God and they asked to be given a king like all of the other surrounding nations. God tried to warn them of the danger of handing over all the power to only one man. But yet the people persisted and Saul was chosen. He had been a chieftain who had had some success as a leader in the wars against their neighbors. The people still maintained a great faith in the presence of God who guided and cared for them, and so as a sign of his being chosen by God as king, Saul was anointed. The anointing made him untouchable. It signed him with the power of God Himself and it raised him above the rest of the people. Whatever he ordered was completed as if it were a command directly from God. (more…)
The pandemic of racism in the United States
David Brooks. Observing from outside what we are now suffering in the United States -the protests, the destruction of statues and monuments, the violence against the police and above all the chaos of the coronavirus pandemic that continues to grow – it would be too easy to think that everything is crazy, that there are no echoes in other countries, and especially that “in my country”, whatever that might be, no such divisions exist because they have been overcome. And that would be a fantasy. A trap of false illusions. There isn’t a place in the world where cultural, social, economic, educational and political differences based on race don’t exist along with the resulting exercise of power by one racial group over another. (more…)
