It’s a New Year; Let’s Resolve to Leave Some Things Behind

By Norman Franklin

Norman Franklin

I’ve never been one to make New Year’s resolutions. They are made with good intentions; that is, people have a sincere commitment to reaching the goals they have set. But they are time proven to be worthless utterances, whether written or verbal.

Studies show that nearly forty percent of adults make New Year’s resolutions. Most focus on one goal, forty-seven percent set multiple goals. Resolution goals range from healthier lifestyles to advancing one’s career.

Less than ten percent keep their resolutions; nearly twenty-five percent drop it by the end of the first week, and more than sixty percent quit after the first month. Perhaps the resolutions are too frivolous to give serious effort to its success, perhaps, once we engage in the task, the discipline, the self-control needed to break old habits and establish new ones requires more energy than we can muster; in any case, we quit.

The New Year’s resolutions reveal a discontent with habits, attitudes and behaviors practiced during the year. Our hope, our desire is to not continue the same habits in the new year. This self-acknowledgement is that the behaviors and attitudes have been deleterious to good mental health, physical health, and a hindrance to progress, unity and successful living.

The success of personal resolutions is the result of the energy, the tenacity, the commitment and endurance of one person’s will. Studies show, in fact, Scripture affirms that there is a greater probability of success when we unite our collective energies to achieve a common goal.

“And if someone overpowers one person, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not easily broken,” Ecclesiastes 4:12.

We boast of being one nation united under God, one people, the United States of America. Of course, we cannot, as a nation, pour our collective energies into achieving individual goals, but we can elevate the context of the New Year’s resolution under the auspices of ‘one nation under God.’

We have been suffering with the congenital deformity of racism since the birth of this nation, Dr. Martin L. King, Jr., stated in his book, “Where do we go from here: Chaos or Community.”

A summary definition of racism from the Merriam Webster dictionary is a belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

Race, again from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry.

The concept of race as a social and cultural identity evolved over centuries. It became prominent during the era of European colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade, with the categorization of people based on physical characteristics. (ChatGPT)

The concept morphed into a social construct in the 17th century in the colonial Americas.

The papal bull “Dum Diversas” of 1452, and subsequent papal bulls, played a major role in shaping the ideas on race; it provided religious justification for subjugation and enslavement of indigenous people the colonial explorers encountered and considered them enemies of Christ.

“A little leaven,” the Savior said.

As a result, we have a mishmash of religious beliefs, corrupted by a flawed edit of a fifteenth century pope who was believed to have papal infallibility, diced into denominationalism, inflexible conservativism, lais.sezfaire liberalism, Christian Nationalism, distortions of the Christ, what He has said, His physical image, and what He has called us to being, masquerading as Christianity. Racism is baseless; it’s an outdated ideology that never promoted the common good of humanity. It is without purpose.

Let me give you something tangible to lock onto for perspective of this lingering social disease.

If you drive down a rural country road, in America or Europe, you will invariably pass a barn that no longer has a purpose. It just sits, abandoned and useless. Its boarding is weathered, structure rickety, missing boards, collapsed roof, and a leaning structure, it’s about to fall over. But no energy is given to removing the lingering image of what once was.

That’s the image of racism. It’s crippled and rickety; it’s trying to hold onto an ideology that only served to divide humanity. It’s time to put away old, ineffective ideas and come to the unity of ‘one nation under God.’

That’s a New Year’s resolution worth committing to.