Weber County Forum Sunday Sermon

Thoughts on the Mount Ogden Community Plan Process

By: Choose the Right

Over the past several months, I’ve been perplexed as to why people keep coming up to me to thank me for my efforts with regard to the Mt. Ogden Community Plan. One fella even dropped me off a loaf of bread. “Gee,” they say, “We just want to thank you for all you’ve done.” These people, it has seemed to me, have done far, far more than me, and I have assumed they are simply very thankful people. Indeed, I feel that I have done very little.

But I think I’ve started to realize what is going on, and while it may seem paradoxical to say it, I think it all boils down to the fact that in a sense, the Holocaust was at least partly the Jews’ own fault. As these humble, decent, hardworking, loyal, harmless people were being rounded up, dispossessed and being sent to the ghettos, then to the camps, and then the ovens, when you get right down to it, it was at least partly their own fault. Of course, a theory this unconventional requires an explanation.

We’ve all seen the pictures: Boxcars being loaded with thousands of people, with Nazi soldiers toting rifles standing by. But have you ever noticed how many soldiers there usually are? Have you ever thought about the logistics of keeping millions of people bottled up in ghettos?

Think about this: Have you seen the photos when the UAW goes on strike – men and women walking the pickets? Now imagine trying to round up a few million of those people, taking away their homes and sending them to ghettos or loading them into boxcars. Or just imagine trying to do that with any six million Irish Americans. See the point?

You can say, well, the Nazis had guns. But it seems to me the Jews had six million pairs of feet, hands, shoes, and as many rocks and long, hard objects as that many hands could carry. Sure, bullets are cheap. But can you imagine trying to control that many people who were willing to do whatever was necessary to have their liberty, including fight to the death, and even being proud to fight to the death for their freedom?

Some wonder why the Apaches in Arizona and the Seminoles in Florida have such wonderful reservation land to live on, when most other tribes have to live in wastelands. It’s because neither of those tribes surrendered. They were never conquered. They were given the good land because that’s the only way the US Government could deal with them. They were willing to die to the last man and woman. More importantly, they were willing to fight to the last man or woman. And those men and women were probably all better people than I am. Believe it or not, it’s almost impossible to conquer people like that.

So here in Ogden, we had, or still have depending on who you talk to, a situation where some guy decided he’d like to stuff his pockets with some of that good, good stuff. All he needed was the deed to some prime public property on the East Bench. So he lined up some local “leaders”, and started the process of beguiling the public.

But some folks stood up and said, “Well, I don’t really agree with that.” They were called all kinds of names, but they stood firm. This is where they lived, after all. It is their home. They were all “little people”, but as of this writing, it seems things are starting to go their way. It’s been gratifying to see what can happen when a few people simply say they have a different point of view about things and are willing to say so and not shut up.

I go to church at about 3210 Polk Ave. It’s a nice, tall, brick building. It was designed locally and built by members, fifty years ago. Nowadays, the church central office has a cookie cutter design that they use everywhere when they put up a church. They’re cheaper and quicker to build, uniform, standardized, and while nice looking, they are entirely repetitive and some would say, dull. Going to church in one, you wonder whether the Lord’s kingdom is looking less like an individual process and more like an assembly line, boiled down to only the essentials required by modern corporate efficiency.

Well wouldn’t you know it? Our old brick church house, after fifty years of standing there without so much as a crack in a single one of her bricks, well somebody’s decided that she may be “sinking” and it may be time for the wrecking ball. It’s no great surprise that this has come up – one can never predict the bureaucratic mind, but here’s the amazing part. To my knowledge not a single person – other than myself – has expressed dismay, much less disagreement, with the whole idea of tearing her down. We just had a party to celebrate her fiftieth birthday. And yet, these same revelers, after the celebration, would tear the old girl down by hand, brick by brick, if asked to. But not one of them will question the reason, much less disagree. You see, to a man and woman, the feeling is that it’s for other people to decide, and then, if they choose to do so, they can inform us of their decision, and then tell us all where to shuffle off to. It’s not our place even to ASK.

And of course, it’s not the place for six million Jews to ask where the boxcars are headed either, is it? The “powers that be,” will decide. We will go, and follow, for that is what good people do. We will not question. We do not want to place ourselves in any kind of jeopardy, so we will do as we are told. Indeed, there are those who will question my loyalty to the church, if not to the Lord himself, even for my having written these few, mild words, just as some will question my affection for Ogden, when I ask about the city debt, or about bulldozing our crown jewels into stucco McMansions – never minding the fact that under our Constitution, the “powers that be” are supposed to be us, and asking, and expressing, are just exactly what we are supposed to do.

Perhaps there is a use in the world for people like me, for some of my neighbors, and for this online forum, after all. In fact, perhaps such as these are even precious. It’s nice to feel that at last, I may be good for something. But now let me be the one to say thank you, to all the people in the Mount Ogden Community (and the rest of the city) who have asked questions and have expressed their view, and who I entreat to continue to do so.

I remember one city council meeting where a humble, quiet, respectful man stood up and said, firmly,

“Stop this. This is enough. Enough is enough.”

I know this man. I couldn’t believe he’d do that.

But it seems we are destined to live always in a world where there will be other people who want to take our land, our homes, our precious things, our bodies, our money, our minds, and even, if they could, our souls, and use them for their own purposes. Therefore, there must also be people like us, to say, “Enough”, and to say, “No.”