Someone who reads my articles at American Thinker wrote an email asking for my thoughts on the subject of honor. Where should I begin? And what should I say?
The dictionary defines honor as having a good reputation, or a showing of (usually) merited respect.
Of course, the Bible tells us in the Old Testament that we should honor God and honor our father and mother, but 1 Peter 2:17 goes further and says we should honor everyone.
Personally, I’m big on honoring the service of our military, police, firefighters, doctors, hospital workers, hospice workers, waiters and waitresses, and basically anyone else who serves the community–if someone is wearing a uniform, I always say thank you to them.
During my youth I was taught to live by the adage if you can’t say something nice about somebody, don’t say anything at all. This presents a bit of a problem because Jimmy Carter recently died. We’re both from Georgia, and I believe we should never speak ill of the dead.
If I had to only write about his career as a politician, I wouldn’t have anything to write. Jimmy Carter was our 39th President, and I vividly remember his brief tenure in the White House. All I can and will say about his presidency was that it wasn’t brief enough. The word “malaise” perfectly describes my life as a teenager during the Carter years in the White House.
As I began to research Carter’s life, looking for some nice things to say about him, unfortunately I found more people with negative things to say about our late former president, some of which I didn’t know or didn’t remember, such as his unwavering support for brutal Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.
Was Jimmy Carter a flawed person? Was he an ordinary human being, just like you or me? Absolutely.
With all my own personal faults, I would not like people saying unkind things about me after I’m dead. I certainly don’t deserve to be praised as a better man than Jimmy Carter.
I don’t believe in speaking ill of the dead, and I’m not about to start just because I wasn’t the biggest fan of another human being while he was alive. As a politician, Jimmy Carter was terrible.
But if we can’t find something nice to say about the departed, what does that say about us? A few people even criticized Carter’s involvement with Habitat for Humanity, and there is where I must draw the line. Habitat for Humanity may not be a perfect charity, but I have seen their good work first hand, and I have helped build houses with that organization for people who could not otherwise afford them. Habitat’s vision is a simple one: they dream of a world where everyone has a decent place to live.
Local businesses donate building materials, and volunteers donate their time and labor under the direction of skilled craftsmen who tell the volunteers what to do and show them how to do it. I was a roofer for a day. It wasn’t difficult work and with about a dozen other volunteers working together simultaneously, we finished the entire roof in one day. If you could hit a nail with a hammer, you were qualified to do the job.
The tough stuff — electrical and plumbing, pouring slabs and framing — was all done by professionals, or people who knew what they were doing. No one was asked to perform tasks beyond their skill level. The reward for our labor was meeting the people for whom we were building the house, and experiencing their sincere gratitude to each and every one of us for what we were doing to help them.
Some critics might complain that the new owners still had to pay a mortgage, to which I say it gave them skin in the game. If you give someone something completely free with no strings attached, they tend to devalue the gift in their own mind and they don’t treat it with the proper respect. But if you give someone a chance to improve their own lives with a fresh start, you’ve done something good for the entire community and given those people reason for hope in a brighter future.
Habitat for Humanity does good work. Period.
I will not be one of those looking for reasons to denigrate the work of Habitat for Humanity, and I will go further and say we should honor Jimmy Carter’s work with that organization. I don’t care if Habitat also works in more than 70 countries (as some complained) around the world because they do work in all 50 states, and even have an office in the small city where we now live. Besides, people in other countries around the world need a clean, dry place to live, too. They should now be getting busy in North Carolina, if you ask me.
For as long as I can remember, Jimmy Carter has been the face of Habitat for Humanity. If you visit the Organization’s History web page, you’ll discover it was founded by Millard and Linda Fuller, but Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter gave the organization global recognition when he began to work with them beginning in 1984. Carter said, “Habitat has successfully removed the stigma of charity by substituting it with a sense of partnership.”
About that, he was absolutely right.
However, in the next several days, there will be some over-the-top praise of Carter such as this gem from Joe Biden: “America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman, and humanitarian.”
This is especially ironic because until Joe Biden’s presidency, Jimmy Carter was easily the worst president in my lifetime and arguably the worst president in U.S. history. Even though I am loathe to criticize Jimmy Carter during the official mourning period, I also feel I must speak the truth. Joe Biden gives me an easy out because now he’s the worst president in history by a wide margin.
It’s a fine line I’m trying to walk here. Work with me.
Let’s dwell on the Habitat for Humanity “good deeds” and not any of the bad things Carter did as president, or after he was president. After all, if we judged everyone by their worst deeds, we would no longer be able to honor any of our dead, not even Sister Teresa.
Remember the very good thing that Jimmy Carter did, which was to put Habitat for Humanity on the map. He helped a lot of people who were the poorest among us and improved their lives. For that alone, his memory should be venerated. Proverbs 14:21 says, Whoever despises his neighbor is a sinner, but blessed is he who is generous to the poor. Indeed.
Jimmy Carter’s body will lie in state in the U.S. Capitol and many famous people will exaggerate his service and influence for their own political reasons. Is this too much? He will be shown the same or similar reverence with which we treat our military war heroes awarded our highest military achievement, the Medal of Honor, that is often awarded posthumously.
The entire federal government will not be open for business on January 9th for Carter’s funeral. Does Jimmy Carter deserve to be honored to this degree for his accomplishments here on Earth?
Some would argue no, he should not. Certainly not to this degree. What should we do? We should honor Carter appropriately. What would be the more appropriate way to honor the memory of Jimmy Carter than a litany of hollow speeches from an endless procession of prevaricating politicians only interested in honoring themselves by lavishing the most praise on a mediocre colleague? They did the same thing when Senator Robert Byrd died, and Byrd had been a member and even an officer in the horribly racist Ku Klux Klan in the past. But he was a Democrat so the media forgave him.
Let’s try to think of something positive to say, shall we? I’ve got to figure out a way to end on a high note. Now I’m thinking the most appropriate honor would be if everyone who benefited from Carter’s work with Habitat for Humanity building houses for poor people–if only those people attended his burial to acknowledge his decades of service to the community, the cemetery would be filled to overflow capacity and the nearby streets would be crowded as well. He helped a lot of poor people.
For that reason alone I say, may Jimmy Carter rest in peace.
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