Bearing the Cross, We Danced: Racism, Stolen Labor, and America’s Unpaid Debt

Bearing the Cross, We Danced: Racism, Stolen Labor, and America’s Unpaid Debt

A moral reckoning with racism, stolen labor,

and America’s unpaid debt—examining history, faith,

and the human cost behind the nation’s wealth

I exclaimed, Domini… Salva Nos… Perimus! as I read a Washington Post column by Michael Gerson, President George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter. 

He'd written it as a rebuke to those excusing Trump’s racism. Here's what he wrote (verse-formatted):

I had fully intended
to ignore President Trump’s
latest round of racially charged taunts…

But I made the mistake
of pulling James Cone’s
The Cross and the Lynching Tree
off my shelf…

Cone recounts the case
of a white mob
in Valdosta, Ga.,
in 1918
that lynched
an innocent man
named Haynes Turner.

His wife, Mary,
promised justice.

The sheriff
turned her over
to the mob.

She was stripped,
hung upside down,
soaked with gasoline,
roasted to death.

In the midst of this torment,
a white man
ripped her belly open
with a knife
and her infant
fell to the ground
and was stomped to death.

God help us.

It is hard
to write the words.

This evil —
white supremacy,
dehumanization,
murder —
is the worst stain
of U.S. history.

It is the thing
that proved generations
of Christians
to be vicious hypocrites.

It is the thing
that turned
normal people
into moral monsters.

That column appeared in August 2019, during Trump’s first term.

Michael Gerson did not live to see a second Trump term. He passed away in 2022. Rest in peace, Michael Gerson (1964–2022).

Reading that passage knocked me flat. It made me think about the true barbarity Black people have faced. 

Not only in the United States but across the Americas. I had heard references before - even in Muhammad Ali interviews - to babies ripped from mothers’ wombs.

I thought it might be hyperbole. I was wrong.

Mary Turner was eight months pregnant. Her husband had been murdered. She dared to grieve. She dared to speak. 

For that she was strung up, her belly cut open, her unborn child stomped to death. Think about that.

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Racism is bewildering.

Left speechless — I have reduced my consternation to just five words: “Don’t you have a fucking life?”

Seven more: What is the purpose of all this?

I’d like to sit a racist down, pat him on the back, and tell him to be serious. They are only trying to live their lives — to go about their business, to climb the ladder of hope, to recover lost time, lost wages, lost dignity.

These Africans you hate so much were stolen. Have you ever thought about that? They never asked to be part of your story. And if you now want to decouple them from your story, then pay up.

Pay what? Here is the arithmetic of stolen labour — for your guidance.

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The Arithmetic of Stolen Labor

If you want to talk about “Go Back To Africa,” here are some numbers to hold in your head:

• Period of coercion considered: 1619–1865 (slavery) + 1865–1965 (Jim Crow) = 346 years.
  
  
• Estimated population under coercion (average): ~10 million people per year.
  
  
• Average weekly labor hours (historical coerced labor): 60–90 hours.
  
  
• Estimated lifetime coerced hours per person: ~1.1–1.6 million hours.
  
  
• Total coerced man-hours across 346 years: 11–16 trillion hours.

Using the 1938 federal minimum wage of $0.25/hour as a crude baseline:

• 11 trillion hours × $0.25 ≈ $3 trillion (1938 dollars)
• 16 trillion hours × $0.25 ≈ $4 trillion (1938 dollars)

Adjusted into today’s dollars (converting historic wages to present value is imprecise, but for illustration):
Approximately $55–80 trillion in today’s money.

Let that sink in!

America’s GDP in 2025 is roughly $27 trillion.
Only about half of what was effectively stolen through centuries of coerced labor.

The U.S. economy has, in part, been built on a debt it never paid.

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So what is the Black man’s crime?
How much suffering is enough suffering??

Blacks moved on. They rebuilt, innovated, created culture, served in wars that did not free them, and—despite everything—contributed magnificently to the nation's wealth.

But moving on is not the same as forgetting or forgiving injustice without reckoning. To say “we moved on” is true; to pretend the theft never happened is not.

Don Kenobi wrote, two decades ago, in Of Gods and Negroes:

“Wasn’t it amazing, that the African American had won every single battle he has playing defence? … I know that when the (man) finally makes his mind up, it will be a thing of beauty to see (many like him) collectivize their dreams and carry on.”

Take the $55–80 trillion and stop the cheap, performative grievance-mongering — or you’ll lose everything… to neglect, or worse, to China!

There’s a rule in paleontology: ornamentation and complication often precede extinction.

Your culture wars — launched to “recover” what was never lost and to remake the republic to suit one demographic — are mere ornamentation: complexity for complexity’s sake, a flailing before the fall. Take heed.

“Wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” — 1 Corinthians 10:12

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They survived 346 years in a wilderness bereft of warmth from men and from the elements.

Put their suffering in your heart for one day, can you?
Even one hour, one minute. They never asked to be part of your story.

That is why they should be left to reclaim their humanity!
Stop the hate-mongering!

Denied basic humanity for 246 years under institutional slavery and then 100 years under Jim Crow, Black people are only trying to catch up. Let them.

Never forget!
They never asked to be part of your story.

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Every skyline in America — brick upon brick, girder upon girder — was built by African labor. Enslaved Africans made America rich, powerful, and bold enough to dream of independence. Without them, America would have been just another colony.

African Americans are, in truth, a gift to America — to humanity. Their stolen labor birthed wealth and culture: jazz, art, struggle, soul.

Even in chains, they fought in wars they would not benefit from. They climbed mountains with weights on their backs — and still they climbed. That is the reckoning racists fear.

Yet the violence continues: physical, psychological, unrelenting.

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Dens of Malice — Echo Chambers of Hate

There are Dens of Malice today —
dark places where grievance festers like a disease.
Modern ears may know them better as echo chambers of hate.

There, reason is drowned out.
There, history is rationalized away.
And there, the old poison is poured into new vessels.

They do this by demonizing Blacks and other minorities.

Their Crime?

The same crime the early Christians committed against pagan Rome:

Waking each morning,
looking heavenward with hope.
Praying to a God hidden from them.
Having nothing, yet living as though they had everything.

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Why the Hatred?

Because kindness — compassion, empathy, humanity, grace — is emotional wealth.
And to the emotionally bankrupt, it is unbearable.
It reminds them of their lack.

The more they lack, the more viciously they tear down
the very pillars of Christianity — of civilization.

They glory in this shame, parading their emptiness as though it were strength.

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Scripture Speaks

As Paul wrote in Philippians 3:19:

“Their end is destruction,
their god is their belly,
their glory is in their shame.
Their minds are set on earthly things.”

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For your eternity’s sake, entertain this thought:

That those who stoke your grievance — second-hand grievances — may be the true enemies of your soul. While they profit from your fury, they cause the fruits of the Holy Spirit in your life to rot and drop off!

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An Admonition to the Downtrodden

Cling to the One who has always loved you — the true Jesus, not the fake gospel that equates faithfulness with money and lowers faith’s bar to a transactional “seed-sowing” scheme. The false gospel promises riches to faithfulness and recruits the vulnerable with a very low standard.

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Sing with David, Who Knew Persecution

“How are they increased that trouble us!
Many are they that rise against us.
Many there be who say of our souls:
‘There is no help for them in God.’
But Thou, O Lord, art a shield for us.
Our glory, the lifter of our head.”

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Shorten the days — lest we perish.

I rest my case.

— Don Kenobi, 23-09-2025

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Sources & Further Reading

• Michael Gerson, Washington Post column (August 2019).
• James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree.
• Philippians 3:19 — see: BibleHub

The Priest: Lighthouse Or Culture Warrior?

Memo Writers for God: Robert Barron, Evangelicalism, and the Danger of Certainty

An essay on Robert Barron, evangelical exclusion, capitalism,
and why Christianity loses its soul when it forgets first love.

A Priest Once Held in Esteem

There was a time I held Robert Barron in the highest esteem.

He is a priest, yes. But one whose agenda now appears increasingly misaligned with the agenda of Christ.

My essay titled The Priest Is a Lighthouse was written with theologians like him in mind. Men who fancy themselves members of what I half-jokingly, half-fearfully call God’s Advisory Council. I call them memo-writers for God, a phrase I gladly borrowed from Cardinal Arinze.

They speak about God fluently. Elegantly. Endlessly.

Yet more and more, they presume to speak for Him, as though proximity to intellect, influence, or institutional authority grants permission to edit the Gospel.

The Lighthouse and the Counterfeit

True spiritual discernment does not announce itself with memos or manifestos. It stands like a lighthouse, steady, quiet, and unshowy, amid the dark and restless sea of borrowed certainty and counterfeit inspiration.

That reflection was written to expose the counterfeit, to contrast it with authentic holiness, and to call us back, not forward, to truth, integrity, and genuine Christian witness.

Above all, it calls us back to the words Christ Himself spoke in the Book of Revelation.

Remember Your First Love

Remember your first love.

That was not a suggestion. It was a warning.

Christ addressed those words to a church that was busy, orthodox, disciplined, and productive, and yet drifting. Sound doctrine remained. Correct language remained. But love had cooled.

They had not abandoned the faith. They had professionalized it.

They had laboured for God, but now they argued Scripture, reminding God, it would seem, of what Scripture says. Becoming, in the process, memo-writers for God. No longer walking humbly with Him.

Remember your first love, the Lord said. Repent. Return.

Not to cleverness.
Not to influence.
Not to proximity to power.

But to the simplicity of love. The first love. The love that listened more than it spoke. The love that trembled before mystery. The love that did not presume to advise God.

Religion Without Awe

This is the danger of religion without awe. It retains the vocabulary of faith while quietly losing its heart.

And so the call remains urgent, timeless, and merciful. Remember your first love.

A Conclusion Reached Over Time

I do not form my opinions based on a single event. I have observed Robert Barron for over ten years. I have read him. I have listened to him. I have watched the patterns.

Only in the last two years, especially after I watched an interview in which he stated flatly, “I hate wokeism,” did the picture finally come into focus for me. That was the moment of clarity.

My conclusion is not casual. It is the result of long observation.

I believe he is a white Christian nationalist, and as such, a danger to the Body of Christ. That is the first point.

Systems, Power, and the Gospel

The second point is this. I do not traffic in labels. There is nothing inherently wrong with socialism, just as there is nothing inherently good about capitalism. Systems are tools. They are judged by their fruits.

Jesus was not a capitalist.

Capitalism, especially in its modern form, centres profit, accumulation, and market efficiency. Jesus consistently warned against wealth as a rival master. You cannot serve God and Mammon.

Capitalism treats wealth as morally neutral. Jesus treated it as spiritually dangerous.

A Troubling Inversion

Have you noticed how priests like Barron seem far more concerned with:

• Defending capitalism,
• Protecting an economic system that routinely produces staggering inequality and entrenched structural injustice,
• Defending historical injustices, 

Than in speaking up plaining for 

• The poor,
• The struggling,
• The sick (advocating affordable healthcare)
• Immigrants,
• The homeless?

Have you also noticed that such priests tend to ignore moral decay in the corridors of power and only speak about it 0 loudly too amongst... you gottit - the poor the struggling, the sick (without healthcare, the immigrants, the homeless, the unloved

Such inversion of concern should trouble every serious Christian conscience.

The Gospel does not require:

• Elaborate footnotes to side with the vulnerable.
• It does not need economic justifications to recognize suffering.
• It does not hedge when naming injustice.

And yet, what we increasingly hear are defenses of systems, not cries for people. I am being quite restrained here. Very restrained.

In truth, I believe Robert Barron is not merely mistaken.
Not merely compromised....But morally dangerous.

And I do not say that lightly.

Those words are not the product of impulse or animus. They arise from:

• Sustained observation,
• From patterns rather than episodes,
• From what is emphasised, what is excused, and what is conspicuously absent.

Ideas have consequences.
Theology has consequences.
Silence, too, has consequences.

When a priest with immense reach consistently expends moral energy defending systems of power while offering only muted concern for those crushed beneath those systems, the danger is not theoretical. It is pastoral. It is ethical. It is real.

To mislead consciences while appearing faithful is a grave thing.

And that is why restraint, here, is not softness—but responsibility.

Evangelicalism and the Theology of Exclusion

At this point, it is necessary to widen the lens. I understand the viewpoint of many who subscribe to Evangelicalism.

The religion of Exclusion.

Of Exceptionalism without effort.

Of Cheap grace.

The religion with a worldview where virtue and so called good "works" are measured by how loudly one condemns sinners.....

....Sinners who, even in their own eyes, know that they are condemned by every holy book. Yet they are driven by forces, by passions they themselves cannot explain.

Paul's Hijacked Will

Even Paul was gripped by such anguish. He called himself a wretched man, lamenting:

Who will save me from this body of death?
The things I hate, I do.
And the things I love, I do not

I paraphrase.

If Paul lamented this way, then perhaps many of those we so easily condemn, on whose backs we have built entire theologies, feel exactly the same.

Yet Paul supported the killing of Christians, found grace. He encountered the Holy Spirit and took on a new nature.

I doubt any LGBTQ person in America supports the killing of Christians. So why do we act as though others could not also take on a new nature? And here is where it becomes even more uncomfortable.

It was after that transformation that Paul made his famous lament! Lamenting that his Will appeared hijacked by forces he could not control.

Hey!!!

If that could happen to St. Paul, the man who wrote Galatians, Corinthians, Romans, then how much more those we are so eager to exclude from fellowship, under the mistaken belief that we gain divine approval by condemning hopeless sinners?

Judgment, Mercy, and the Samaritan

I am as perplexed by gender reassignment as any Pharisee out there. I am also perplexed by homosexuality and same sex attraction.

But to condemn them, I cannot.

Nor will I subscribe to any organization that does.

Not because I doubt the Bible, but because, as Pope Francis said, who am I to judge?

I once wrote a piece on the Parable of the Good Samaritan and deliberately gave the Samaritan false eyelashes and lipstick, making him visibly transgender coded.

Why?

Because I wanted to understand why the Levite and the priest walked past him.

The Samaritan saw the stricken man for what he was, yet still spent his time and treasure on the wounded man.

Why?

Because he knew God.

While the others hurried past, perhaps to meet God in the Temple, the Samaritan recognized God in a human being.

Jesus loved the Samaritans. That forced me to learn more about them.

They were hated by the Jews, though they were Jews themselves. They were the ones not carried into Babylonian captivity and who, out of necessity, intermarried with Gentiles.

But I digress.

Final Word

Bottom line: Be wary of Barron and his ilk. Be very wary. He sits on Trump’s so called religious advisory council. That alone should tell you enough.

Do not be deceived.

Don Don Kenobi
OldManInTheMolue
Molue Monologue 2026

For context and earlier reflection:
https://donkenobi.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-priest-is-lighthouse.html

Christianity Without the Cross: Fulton J. Sheen on Suffering and Truth

A theological critique inspired by Fulton J. Sheen exposing how the prosperity gospel rejects the Cross, redemptive suffering, and authentic Christianity.

*Listening to an old, old sermon by Fulton J. Sheen.*

After all, he died 46 years ago, on my birthday.

Did I ever tell you my baptismal name is *Fulton Sheen*?

But I digress.

That sermon gave me fresh insight into Jesus’s rebuke of Peter:

 *“Get behind me, Satan.”*

Below is an edited excerpt of the sermon. Read it slowly:

Fulton Sheen: 

One analysis of the demonic is this:
the break-up of religious communities,
the fracturing of fellowship,
the shattering of the oneness of Christ.

That is one way to understand the demonic at work.
But there is a second, deeper, biblical analysis.

I take you now to the sixteenth chapter of Matthew,
where our Blessed Lord asks the most important question ever asked:

 *“Who do men say that I am?”*

Eventually, Peter gives the right answer:
 *“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”*

Then our Lord announces what must follow.

He says that He is going up to Jerusalem,
that He will be delivered over to the Gentiles,
that He will be crucified,
and that He will rise from the dead.

Peter was willing to accept a divine Christ.
But he was not willing to accept a suffering one.

The moment our Lord spoke of becoming the victim for our sins,

the moment He spoke of the Cross,
Peter protested:

 *“This shall never happen to you.”*

In effect, Peter was saying:
*We do not want that kind of Christ.*

 “Get Behind Me, Satan”

Imagine this.

Within the space of a minute and a half,
Peter goes from being blessed
to being called Satan.

Why did our Lord say this?

How could someone who had just spoken
by divine revelation
be rebuked so sharply?

To understand this,

we must go back to the beginning of our Lord’s public life,
to the three temptations presented to Him by Satan.

From those temptations, we learn something essential:

 *The essence of the satanic
 is the hatred of the Cross of Christ.*
Let that dwell in your mind.

From the biblical point of view, what is the satanic?

• Contempt for the Cross
• Resistance to redemptive suffering
• A Christ without sacrifice

*The Final Word*

The satanic is not merely immoral.
It is not merely violent.
It is not merely divisive.

At its core,
*it is anti-Cross.*

And wherever the Cross is removed,
softened,
explained away,
or replaced with comfort, power, or success....
....THERE you will find its shadow.

*End of excerpt.*

You may watch the Full sermon here:

Click: https://youtu.be/WQA9nxUtIew?si=zqW3-9j4-sCN1f9T 

Conclusion (OldManInTheMolue)

The prosperity gospel…

Because it turns God into a vending machine.

Turns faith into a transaction.

Turns suffering into a moral failure.

Because it is contempt for the Cross.

Because it resists redemptive suffering.

Because it offers Christianity without sacrifice.

It hates the Cross.

And because it hates the Cross, (that which it claims to worship)

it is a lie.... 

The Prosperity Gospel is a lie!

Hey! I’m only repeating what you know,
deep down....
In your heart,
to be true.

Have you considered that perhaps

Jesus’s strident rebuke of Peter

was meant to echo through the ages,

to keep us from falling

for the lure of Mammon?

Here’s an interesting thought I must share with you:

Jesus did not say, “You cannot serve God and the devil.”
He said instead,  *“You cannot serve God and mammon.”*

Why mammon and not devil?
I will not spell out why.
You already know the answer (If you are honest with yourself).

You always have known the answer....

Hear Fulton Sheen again:

And wherever the Cross is removed,
softened,
explained away,
or replaced with comfort, power, or success....
....THERE you will find its shadow.

The Molue is noisy,but some truths still cut through the noise.

Here's an audio-video link put together specially for you: https://youtu.be/5wEZ-mXRPlk?si=HSt3ScOBPVIjvBqY

I rest my case.

Don Kenobi

#MolueMonologues 2026

#MyFrancisEssays

#RunFromTheProsperityGospel

 

Matthew 19:24 Explained: Why Jesus Said “Again I Tell You”

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“Again I Tell You”: The Meaning of Matthew 19:24

Matthew 19:24 explained.
Why Jesus said “Again I tell you,” 

and what His repetition reveals about 
Wealth, Grace, and the Kingdom of God.

24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to pass through

the eye of a needle than for a rich man

to enter the kingdom of God.”

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Matthew 19:24

Why Did Jesus Say “Again”?

Jesus had already said something deeply unsettling:

“It is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.”

That statement alone collided with a core assumption of His audience:
that wealth was evidence of God’s favor.

They heard Him.
They just did not believe Him.

So He said it again.

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“Again” as Correction, Not Repetition

Jesus was not repeating Himself because His listeners misunderstood His words.
He was repeating Himself because their theology was wrong.

The word “again” signals correction, not clarification.

It says:
You heard me. You just don’t accept it.

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“Again” as Escalation

The second statement is not gentler.
It is stronger.

“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle…”

Jesus moves from difficulty to impossibility.

There is no escape clause.
No soft landing.

“Again” means:
I am not revising this. I am sharpening it.

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“Again” as Judicial Emphasis

In Semitic teaching, repetition functions as legal language.
It carries the weight of a verdict.

Jesus is saying, in effect:

Let this be established.
This matter is settled.
No reinterpretation.
No dilution.

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Why the Disciples Were Shocked

Scripture records their reaction immediately:

“When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished…”

That shock proves Jesus achieved His aim.

If the rich, those assumed to be blessed, are in danger,
then no one enters the kingdom by advantage.

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The Point Jesus Was Driving Toward

Jesus was dismantling a system of spiritual arithmetic.

Wealth does not equal favor.
Poverty does not equal failure.
Merit does not open the kingdom.

Grace does.

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In Summary

Jesus says “Again” because:

• He is confronting disbelief, not misunderstanding

• He is intensifying the warning, not softening it

• He is closing the case, not opening a debate

“Again” means:

I meant what I said the first time.

(c) Virtual Research Assistant

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