"I'd
like to talk about the laws of man, here in this city, where those
laws are written. I'd like to talk about higher laws. It would be
great to assume that once there's the other, that the laws of man
serve these higher laws, but, of course, they don't always.
I remember how my
mother would bring us to chapel on Sundays and my father used to
wait outside. One of the things that I picked up from my father and
my mother was the sense that religion often gets in the way of God;
for me, at least, it got in the way -- seeing what religious people,
in the name of God, did to my native land.
So, even though I was a believer, and -- and
perhaps because I was a believer, I was cynical -- not about God,
but about God's politics.
But then my cynicism got another
helping hand. It was a -- It was Colin Powell, a five-star general, called the
greatest W.M.D. [Weapon of Mass Destruction] of them all: a tiny little virus
called A.I.D.S. And the religious community, in large part, missed it. And the
ones that didn’t miss it could only see it as divine retribution for bad
behavior -- even on children, even if the fastest growing group of HIV
infections were married, faithful women.
God is in the slums, in the
cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who
has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in
the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted
opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them.
