BE WARY

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D. (6/23/2013)

 

          “Be wary of people who ask you to trust them.”  This was some of the best advice my father ever gave me.  Trust those who’ve proven themselves trustworthy.  Trust is given, not requested.  If people have been secretly poking around in your garbage can for several years, saving all those torn up letters, receipts, and credit card and bank statements, would you trust them, especially if they said it was “for your own good”?

 

          Snoops are inherently untrustworthy.  As a young soldier nearly 70 years ago, I was assigned with a top secret clearance to a counter-intelligence unit, snooping on snoops, spying on spies.  Things were never as they appeared.  A distrust of government is built into our system of government with the checks and balances of its three branches, judicial, executive, and congressional.  The reason is obvious as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  Politicians crave power, and, therefore, they tend to be corrupt.

 

          Of course, the government never told anyone that they were pilfering our electronic garbage cans.  Both Republicans and Democrats have been at it.  Now, we have a gang of military officers festooned with ribbons and bric-a-brac, telling us that they haven’t been reading the stuff from our garbage cans.  They just like to collect stuff in case they might need it.  An argumentum ad ridiculum.

 

          I’m not sure I believe them.  By the way, I never broke my pledge of secrecy as long as the secrets remained classified.  Those who have are contemptible.    

ON CHANGING GENDERS

The Rev. Dana Prom Smith, S.T.D., Ph.D.  (6/8/2013)

 

          After I completed my internship at UCLA’s Neuro-psychiatric Institute, I opened an office in West Los Angeles which eventually meant artists, screen writers, musicians, actors, and directors as clients.  Many were gay and lesbian.  Well into the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, several people came to me for counseling as they considered changing their sexual identity.

 

          At first, I was baffled, unsure of what I thought or how I felt.  They were obviously sincere and in emotional distress.  I felt uneasy which set off a long soul searching and an intellectual exploration.  I’m a Christian of fairly conservative theological disposition, but definitely no Fundamentalist, as well as being inclined toward the traditional.  Sometimes, those closest to me call me “a stick in the mud” or “an old fart.”

 

          The creation is not perfect and always evolving.  Without a second thought, we correct club feet, cleft palates, and even transplant organs.  If that were the case, why not gender identities since our given genders are sometimes flawed?  Such a change would be an act of mercy.  Then my responsibility would be to embrace and help them, as I could, with the profound consequences, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual, of those changes.  Frequently, I felt uneasy in those situations, almost tentative; however, unease isn’t a justification for condemnation, disapproval, or inaction.  It’s a cause for compassion.  Once we step off the curb and join the march, we always feel uneasy.  As with Abraham, the journey is always into terra incognita.