There have been several important men as far as my faith is concerned. One was Chaplain Carl T. Hawkins who mentored me when the “scales dropped from my eyes” as St. Luke describes the conversion of St. Paul. Another was also a Baptist minister, Arthur Blessitt, best known for dragging a twelve-foot cross around the planet. That sounds extreme, especially to my liturgical friends, yet alone people who have not yet come to faith. It is sort of like the seemingly odd prophets of doom that frequent Times Square in New York City with signs proclaiming “The End is Near.” I saw them as a child around 1957. But it has allowed Arthur to reach people with the Gospel message who would not otherwise hear it, people such as the late PLO founder (and terrorist) Yasser Arafat. What I learned from Arthur was how to turn everyday incidents (such as someone calling your phone number by mistake, or mailing in a bill) into an opportunity to witness to your faith.
In 1976, when I was in my late twenties, I went to see Arthur. I was around 26 or 27 and he was running for President of the U.S. in the Democratic Party primary in Florida. Of course, it would have been a real miracle had he won, but he got more than a few thousand votes state-wide. The occasion was billed and set up as a “political rally.” When he went to the podium for a thirty-minute speech, it was actually a sermon, but a sermon that only Arthur could deliver. At the end of his speech, he simply said “I’m Arthur Blessitt, I’m running for President of the U.S. and I’d appreciate your vote.”
During that sermon, Arthur mentioned walking across an arid part of Africa with his cross. He came to a compound with an eight or twelve-foot tall chain link fence surrounding it. There were hungry and thirsty native Africans scattered about outside the fence, perhaps waiting for scraps. Perhaps waiting in vain? As Arthur was passing the compound, a white person, possibly European, saw him, hailed him, and invited him inside. There was an elegant, and expensive, air-conditioned residence inside the walls of the fence. The hosts gave him water to drink and as dinner hour was approaching, they invited him to stay for dinner. After dinner, Arthur asked them, “What brings you to this hot and desolate part of Africa.” Someone left the table for an instant and returned with a pouch. Out of the pouch and unto the table tumbled four-or-five, walnut-sized, crystal-appearing stones. The host said one word: “Diamonds!”
Arthur looked at them somewhat bewildered and said: “These aren’t diamonds. These are just rocks! The real diamonds are on the other side of your fence waiting for you to notice them. Diamonds aren’t rocks, diamonds are people!” Though Arthur’s reply was wasted on his hosts, hearing that story at that “political” rally resonated within me, and I’ll never forget it. Our world, our misguided human, Godless system that is spinning out of control has assigned a value on a commodity (in this case, a nugget of pure carbon which eons ago was a scrap of dolomite.) This value weighs in the market much more than any human life does, certainly more than impoverished people with no future. Eventually, the uncut stones will find their way to Antwerp or Zurich where they will be chiseled and ground to what the world’s wealthy class deems as perfection. Cutting and polishing the stone is the easy part and quality jewelers are usually paid well. The hard part in this process is getting the earth to grudgingly surrender the raw stones in the first place. This is a job that involves danger. Heavy machines may be involved, perhaps explosives, as well as toiling below the surface in a dark mine or in ankle deep mud on the surface in the African heat. These people are barely paid at all. While the fruits of their labor are considered precious, the laborers, themselves, are seen by society as worthless, expendable. Very few people who adorn themselves with these jewels care, or wish to know what was involved in this bloody harvest. I use the term “bloody harvest” because an estimated 3.7 million people have died through the ages because of diamonds, most recently because of civil wars in Africa to control diamond-rich countries. Others die as well from mining accidents and so on.
MINING DIAMONDS: A SHORT PRIMER
Diamonds are formed from carbon, but likely not coal. Coal has too many impurities and it is the wrong sort of rock to begin with. Diamonds are more likely formed from marble or dolomite in the bowels of the earth under great heat and pressure. Under these conditions, the carbon crystalizes and turns into diamonds. But, before the diamonds can be harvested, they must migrate to the surfact or just under the surface where they are discovered, either in mines or on the surface, itself, where an alluvial process (sand and clay immersed in water) scoops up the diamonds much as placer gold was mixed with sediment during the California Gold Rush.) Whether chipping away in a dark tunnel at the Kimberlite pipes that convey the diamonds through the mantle or sifting through sediment by hand, mining for diamonds is a backbreaking process. Young, healthy bodies are shattered forever without so much of a mention of workman’s compensation. There probably isn’t even a term for this in the Akan or Dagbani language. If workers die in the process of harvesting the stones, well, then there are plenty of more healthy and desperate people looking for work in Africa.
ONTOLOGICAL SHIFT
The word “ontological” is an interesting word. It is a compound word in Greek formed from ontos (ὄντως) which means “being” or “existence” and logia (λογία ) which means “study.” In some fundamental sense, it is the study of things that exist, and in a personal sense, the weight we give to the different things (trees, stars, bird, diamonds, people.) For example, most of us would not hold trash or toxic waste in high esteem. On the other hand, an ounce of silver or gold has a real value.
To rearrange an individual’s worldview and say “This matters and that really does not” takes a tremendous leap of faith on the part of the learner. To say that black lives matter just as much as white lives matter is a notion that many people cannot accept, even in America. But as President Barak Obama once pointed out, babies are not born racist, so the thought that a white person is superior to a black person is something that is learned (or taught.) Something that is learned is often difficult to “unlearn,” but it can be done. In this case, it must be done! The notion that there is a superior race is a notion that is not taught in Scripture. Even Jews reject any teaching that suggest they are superior to people of other races. God reveaed Himself to the world at Sinai and chose the Jews because they were the only ones who at least attempted to keep His laws, though with mixed results. But as Jesus pointed out, God can turn stones into Children of Abraham (Matthew 3:9, 10.)
When Jesus said that we should love our enemy, he was referring to (nay, demanding) an ontological shift. To love someone who hates you seems unnatural, especially since hate seems to come easy to many people while love requires a good deal of work. Jesus was a radical, neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and we should not try to pigeonhole him. When he said a person who looks lustfully at someone is a sinner just the same as one who has committed the act, it meant that you don’t have to sweat up the sheets with your neighbor’s wife in some cheap hotel room to be an adulterer. Simply banging her in your mind makes you one! Using that reasoning, there are many more people guilty of murder in this country just because they’ve wished the death of another but were too lazy to act on their murderous impulses! And fortunately so.
What Arthur Blessitt was proposing to this mining supervisor in Africa was that the real treasures in life are people and kindness, relationships and caring. Diamonds, on the other hand, are as cold as ice and if they were as common as leaves on trees, they would have no value more than common sea glass. This is because though part of their value comes from their brilliant appearance, the other part comes from their scarcity.
I saw a story last week about a child in a supermarket who discovered a blue lobster in the tank at the seafood counter of the store. Somehow, the color of the lobster which was not noticed when it was pulled from the sea, or weighed on the dockside scales, shipped and unpacked at the market where it was unceremoniously dumped in the tank suddenly became obvious, and immediately the lobster became a rarity and much in demand. A cause célèbre among crustaceans if you will. If we can be so caring and committed about saving a blue-shelled lobster and rock-like pieces of carbon, then why can’t we see the intrinsic value of people regardless of their culture? Or their color?
Jesus wouldn’t care one whit about diamonds. He would care about tired, exploited, poor, hungry and naked children. What we see here is capitalism at its worse. It is feverish extraction at a cost in human misery to the many, at the benefit of a very wealthy few. If this is not an indictment, I don’t know what is.
The ontological shift that I referred to above comes through the work of the Holy Spirit in the process of regenerating the neophyte, renewing the mind of the young believer to understand that God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8, 9.) We need to understand with as much clarity as we can muster what the priorities are as our heavenly Father sees them to be. We need to questions longheld notions and assumptions, perhaps even the belief that God intended America to be über alles the other nations in the world. We may need some divine chiseling and polish even as diamonds do, but I guarantee you that God will be pleased with the result.