Removing all honors to Cesar Chavez is necessary, but let’s ask the tough questions about who we are as a society while doing so.
The Right Question
The greatest irony in all of this is that in trying to save our children from pedophiles, we often wound them the most.
Tiger Woods, considered by many the greatest golfer ever, potentially has an alcohol addiction and wrecked his cars twice.
People say that he needs treatment.
Cesar Chavez, a man who improved the lives of countless migrant workers, had a sexual addiction and abused several children and adults.
People say that they are utterly disgusted with the memory of him.
Addiction is addiction, the partial loss of will, but when we put the word sexual before it, it becomes irrelevant in our thinking. It is as though Mr. Chavez never did any good for anyone because he also decided to do such deviant harm to others.
Why is it impossible for us to understand addiction in people like Mr. Chavez?
Because we do everything to protect our children, but in the process, we wound them the most by making them believe that there are people in the world who are both good and evil at the same time.
What a frightful world we paint in their young minds.
Whether we believe in Jesus or not, consider the wisdom in these words — “A good tree is not able to produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit.”
A good person who is addicted does not produce bad fruit, their addiction does, although they are responsible for it by having become addicted.
A bad person does not produce good fruit. They only deceive others into thinking they have good fruit.
We may always differ as to what is true good fruit and what is deceptive fruit, so consider, in knowledge of Word, the case of David. Committing adultery and having her husband murdered was heinous.
The question is, did David bring that to fruition, plan it, prepare for it, carry out each step willfully, or was he addicted, unable to stop it from being worked out through the blindness working in his addiction?
If the former is true, then all of his other fruit was bad, those appearing good were a deception. But knowledge of Word states — Name said that David was after His heart and would do all of His will.
We do not have to believe in the Bible to recognize the point being made here according to Word’s teaching. David bore good fruit; his addiction brought forth bad fruit. If we think that David just decided to do something so heinous, then he could not have done all of Name’s will.
Good people make mistakes every day, but we are talking about working things out, bringing them to fruition. Good people resist working out bad things, but when not successful, they need help, falsely concluding sometimes that they are not good at all. As a society, we need to get beyond that in all forms of addiction.
The key problem behind all addiction is our mind and conscience opposing each other (see The Mind of our Heart).
Teaching our children that Mr. Chavez must have had only bad fruit and that that which appeared good must have been deceptive — leads them to question whether every good fruit they see is actually bad, distrusting everyone or all men or all women. Or, as stated, we can lead them to believe that people can have good and bad fruit, for that is our human nature. Such reasoning lacks conscientious intelligence.
We are all easily deceived until we can produce the greatest fruit — unconditional love and forgiveness. It is the greatest because it plants good seeds in those who want to start anew.
Conscientious Intelligence in Human Nature
There is nothing but admiration for parents’ love for their children, living or dying for them. It is the natural process of survival for humankind. Not surprising, it is also found in the animal kingdom. Biologically, it is studied and understood.
However, it is far from understood how some of us can love those who harm their children with unconditional love. It not only refers to loving others without conditions, it refers to loving all others this way. Parents have unconditional love for their children, but usually for no one else. So how does unconditional love for everyone differ?
In Greek, Word used the word agapé in the highest sense, for Name is agapé, along with being spirit and light. We, therefore, in the image of Name, God or Life depending on our beliefs, are agapé names of light in spirit. But Word tells us to be careful that the light in us is not darkness, implying that we can be blind to our own agapé names of light. It does not mean that our light can go out, for he used the verb is, not become. Light can only be darkness at the same time to someone blind.
Word also distinguished between being complete darkness (completely blind) and having only a dark (blind) spot. The latter is the limited use of our agapé names of light in spirit. In it we love only some unconditionally, unable to see anyone else in the blind spot of our agapé light. Since it is in our nature to love even one unconditionally, we must be capable of loving everyone this way. It has nothing to do with their being our children, other than the fact that the closeness of this relationship makes it the most likely to draw out our true nature.
The oneness of all life reveals that, spiritually, we are all in each other’s light and that this divine-like power to love unconditionally comes from Name — directly into our singularity in Word. Once we are blind completely or in part, whatever agapé we do experience, mostly for our children, is greater than all other life we experience. So naturally, we protect our children against any and all threats. Thus, the thought of going from complete or partial blindness to full vision, where we can love even those who harm our children, is simply beyond comprehension.
However, if we had some way of learning the process and follow it one step at a time, could we then comprehend it? Would we still be able to give up our lives or take a life to protect our children — but do so while loving the perpetrators unconditionally? Consider what goes through our minds when doing so with hatred.
With the world veiled to us completely or through a blind spot, we bring our children into it anyway. We see our children with whatever agapé light there is in us that is still light to us or some semblance. Without complete vision though, although our agapé is still unconditional for them, our minds cannot see the problem, cannot reason what they cannot see, which means we do not see or reason beyond the surface appearances of this world.
Simply put, we see ourselves as these physical bodies without access to understanding that, behind these surfaces, we are agapé names of light in spirit. As Word put it, the flesh profits nothing. It is the spirit that gives life. It profits nothing because we put it on at birth and take it off at death. Without complete vision and its accompanying spiritual understanding, we also see our children as flesh, just as we see ourselves. We even believe that they are the fetus in the womb.
With spiritual understanding though, we know that we all enter the body at birth through the breath of the Spirit of Life. It is the Spirit of Life in Word breathing us into our bodies, first described when Name breathed into the dust and we became living souls, spirit embodied in flesh, viewed symbolically or not.
From the very moment we see our children and believe that they are their bodies, we believe that the flesh profits everything and the spirit profits nothing. Consequently, we see those who harm them as people harming who they are, flesh, blind to the fact that they cannot harm who they really are, spirit.
It is necessary to hate actions that threaten or take the flesh life of our children, but hating anyone for doing so is a sign that we do not understand our real life. We may even believe that we are spirit, but we have no way of experiencing life as agapé names of light in spirit — without unconditional agapé for everyone.
Instead, we live life as though we are all physical beings with no light inside of us, light that has become darkness, or light that shines but only for some. That is why so many of us believe that some people can never change once there light “has gone out.” We fail to understand that no one’s light ever goes out. We are only blind to it and, thus, to the understanding of it.
If we have the true experience and understanding of life, we can hear about Mr. Chavez and know that he was at least partially blind. We can thus avoid judging him and strive to forgive and love the memory of who he truly was unconditionally. But this is while hating his actions and understanding that he must have made bad choices to have become addicted and thus was responsible for being addicted and unable to stop those actions from being worked out through him.
With the true experience and understanding of life, we can hate the suffering his blindness caused to the bodies and minds of other agapé names of light in spirit. And we sincerely hope that those who were abused are not completely or partially blind themselves but can understand who they are, and heal quickly, and who Mr. Chavez was, and unconditionally forgive him posthumously.
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