Dear Senator Obama, We have never met but I thought I might write and share with you some thoughts about how you might respond to the problem you are having now because of the sermons of your pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I would say this if I were you,
My fellow Americans, Much has been made lately about the statements of my pastor. This is what I believe about him and about what he said.
His statements were not a distraction. They were not a mistake, They were not taken out of context. They were not merely wrongheaded. In my view, and in my soul and in my faith, I consider them to be nearly pure examples of hate speech. They were bigoted and like most bigotry, they were utterly false and terribly hurtful. They were also unpatriotic and utterly false. I have come to believe that my pastor and other members of the church are also anti-Semitic. This is not hard for me to say because it is the truth, but it is not the whole truth.
This is the whole truth. This flawed bigoted man saved my life. He took me from a life of despair to a life of hope, from a cynical indifference to a life of faith. He did this for me. He saved me. And this is why I never left his church. This is why I will always credit him as my mentor and friend. This is why I asked him to marry me to my beloved Michelle. This is why I asked him to baptize my girls. This is why I will always honor him as my teacher. I would rather lose the presidency than spit on my pastor.
However, I did not go to him for his anti-American politics or his blatant racism. I went to him for personal guidance, for hope and for a way to Christ. To understand how that could be true I ask you, all of you who are listening to my words, to think about your own lives and your own mentors and teachers and family and friends. The ones who loved you and believed in you and taught you to believe in yourself may also have been bigots. Many of them may have come from immigrant pasts or slave pasts or pasts where they were beaten or degraded or worse because of the color of their skin or the nature of their religion or their country of origin. Many of them were right about you but wrong about many other things, perhaps most other things. God works with broken instruments. Let me ask you how you dealt with the awareness that the people who had helped you and loved you the most were themselves broken and bigoted because of their experience of suffering discrimination. Did you denounce them for their flaws or did you accept them for their love. It is unfair to end a friendship or break the bonds of family or friendship because the person who loved you could not find the love and spiritual generosity that you developed in your life.
There is a way to explain this that comes from the Jewish tradition and was told to me by a rabbi. Once there was a great rabbi named Elisha ben Abuyah. He had a brilliant student named Meir. One day, after seeing the death of a child, Rabbi Elisha ben Abuya became an apostate, an atheist, a denier of the existence of both God and justice. He said, “There is no Justice and there is no Judge.” After his apostasy, all his students left him and denounced him, except for one-Rabbi Meir. He continued to study with his former teacher, scandalizing all the other rabbis who severely criticized Rabbi Meir for studying with a man they now only called Aher, the other one. Rabbi Meir calmly answered them by saying, “My teacher is like a pomegranate. I throw away the bitter skin and drink the sweet juice.”
I know many of you cannot imagine any sweet juice flowing from a man whose entire 36 year ministry has been boiled down into 20 seconds of bigotry. I understand. But you did not know this man. I am saddened by his words, I am revolted by his words. He will have nothing to do with my campaign. (On Friday Obama did say, “I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies. I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it’s on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Reverend Wright that are at issue.”)
But I say to you, just as you might say about the prejudice in the heart of those who might have once taught you, I can still taste the sweet juice of faith and hope and pride that I drank, not from his lips, but from his heart.
Thank you and God bless my pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright
