I need to start this with a disclaimer: I know people will have opposing viewpoints to the contents of this article and I respect that, but if I don’t use my voice to explain my heart, I’m not doing much good, am I? So, although I fear the controversy, I trust you can respect me as well, because as Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." Next, I gave Jesus a modern paraphrased voice, so hopefully no one is offended by that. And finally, I want you to know without a doubt that I do not condone violence of any kind, done in the name of any group, I think within every group we find extremists and in my view, extremism is never the answer. Only love and compromise will solve the problems we face in the end. "I have decided to stick with love, hate is too great a burden to bear." - MLK Jr.

I just finished a great week of volunteering as the storyteller at vacation Bible school. For some people who know me, this may be confusing. I left church several years ago, and I guess you could say since then I have claimed a sort of agnosticism. Basically, what I know is that I don’t know, nor can I ever have definitive proof one way or the other, and so, I just don’t do religion very well. However, I do love philosophy. No matter who you are, you have some sort of philosophy that you live by. When I read the Bible as a book of philosophy, I find a lot of nuggets of wisdom that are well worth living life by. As with other philosophies, some of the things contained therein are also questionable.

So, anyway, I found a church that accepts me in spite of my questioning, and is very considerate of my lack of religion. What this particular church sees, I guess, is that I love people and want to see people have the best in their lives and to live by a philosophy of love. So, that is, in a nutshell, how I happened to be teaching about the parable of the one lost sheep today.

This was a story that Jesus told to some religious fellows who were condemning him for hanging out with “sinners.” Jesus heard these religious guys complaining about the company he was keeping and he said "Look guys you don’t get it at all, so let me break it down for you. There was a shepherd who had 100 sheep, and he took very good care of these sheep, because he loved them. One night he was counting his sheep and there were only 99. (Now, I don’t know about you, but 99 is a lot, so you know, maybe I would pull a Queen Elsa and “Let it go.”) This guy, he probably counted again, just to be sure, and on coming out at 99 again, he thinks, “I love that sheep, and I know these sheep are safe, so I’m going to leave the 99 and go look for the one.” Joy of joys he finds it, takes it back and celebrates his 100 sheep."

So, Jesus is telling us this one sheep was important enough as an individual to leave the whole rest of the flock and go out looking for it. He also says that any one sheep in the flock would have also been as highly treasured, not that this particular sheep was actually different from the rest, it just happened to be the one in need.

Now it is just a story, but Jesus was jam packed with wisdom as a philosopher, and sometimes you can read a story over and over and find different things in it. Yesterday as I read that parable again, I thought about all of the people who are kind of angry at me because I support #blacklivesmatter, and I thought, “This parable is the essence of black lives matter!” You see, I do indeed know that we all matter, just as, to that shepherd all 100 of his sheep mattered. But that shepherd, when one sheep was in need, left the 99 to go and help that one sheep. As someone who lives by a philosophy of love, that is exactly how I see my support of BLM. I am part of the whole flock of humanity, but at this point, there is a particular group in need of my support, so for now, I need not look out for the other 99, I will go out to protect the one as much as I am able, because I love all, and because I realize that looking for the one, doesn’t mean I don’t love the other 99.

"We have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of love into the veins of our civilization." -Martin Luther King, Jr.