Letters: A first step for persecuted Christians

Thanks for reminding us of the continuing atrocities being committed by ISIS. The violence reads like something from the Assyrian conquest of thousands of years ago.

I read the 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative’s provisions to try to stop the slaughter and return the areas and people to peace. Despite the hopes, the suggested help relies on UN agencies, which have proven to be powerless in the past. Their record of preventing attacks in Israel are dismal. The suggestion to provide an armed force to protect the new state to be carved out as a haven would require an enormous amount of time to recruit, arm and train. Witness the collapse of the so-called Iranian army, 200,000 troops that fled at the first shots fired, leaving all the military equipment for ISIS. 

We need an organization as effective as Samaritan’s Purse to channel aid for resettlement and protection. This would be, at least, the first step to salvaging the Christian population. 

Any hope for a true Western military response seems doomed by political division and fear of being drawn into an another endless war in the Middle East.

Paul Smith

Wichita, Kan.

Scripture must trump culture

Jim Denison is right on homosexuality. It’s important that we decide the biblical authority on the matter while we maintain a Christlike spirit of grace toward all sinners. 

There are two prevailing cultures that must not win over the authority of Scriptures and the Spirit of Christ—the secular relativist culture and the religiously pharisaic culture in some church circles. 

Sin is never justified, and neither is judgmental hatred.

Julio Guarneri

McAllen

Learn from past mistakes

I read and liked President Obama’s recent Prayer Breakfast address. Our country’s future is in danger if we continue to deny how history impacts our lives today. We suffer the consequences of our ancestors’ sins. It is up to us, today, to make amends for those transgressions and make needed changes—right past wrongs—make sure we do not repeat them.  

America has been a racist nation from its inception. No one should be proud of the white man’s treatment of Indians and black people over the past 400 years. Many people considered Indians and blacks less than human, inferior to the white man. We took the Indians’ land by force and deceit and enslaved black people.

Our educational system does our young people and our country a great disservice by not writing and publishing history textbooks that teach the total truth about our nation’s flawed past and how the consequences of some of those flaws impact us today. Each succeeding generation reaps what previous generations sowed, whether good or evil.

Martin Luther King Jr. loved America and all its people so much, he willingly, literally sacrificed his life by eloquently pointing out our country’s failure to live up to her professed ideals of “freedom and justice for all.” We would be a much better nation if we as people made the effort to learn from our past mistakes and strive to become the “beloved community” God wills us to be.  

Paul Lam Whiteley Sr.

Louisville, Ky.