Just a couple of thoughts:
On Palm Sunday:
When Jesus was praying in the garden of Gethsemane, he was supposedly alone, so how did anyone find out what he said in prayer? Same with the forty days in the desert. He was alone, wasn’t he?
If Jesus was preaching day in and day out in the temple, the Pharisees should have recognize him and they should not have needed Judas to identify him. That is, of course, the Pharisees were really dumb.
Pilate probably knew what was going on with the Pharisees and the elders, and he didn’t want Jesus to live because he was afraid of a rebellion, so he went along with it and pretended he was reluctant to kill an
innocent man.
On the Tibetan independence movement:
Fact: There are six million Tibetans and 1.6 billion Chinese.
Fact: Most of that 1.6 billion Chinese do not want China to disintegrate.
Fact: A lot of that 1.6 billion Chinese want freedom of expression and democracy.
Fact: Tibet is landlocked.
Therefore, we should not let ethnic boundaries divide us. Instead, we should work together to create a new China. A better China. Not the Communist Party’s China, but a democratic people’s China that encompasses all
ethnic groups. China should not just mean the nation of the Han. It is the nation of the Manchurians, the Mongols, the Uyghurs and the Tibetans, as well as the fifty six other ethnic minorities out there. The government should reflect that.
1.6 billion Chinese working together would do a lot more than just six million Tibetans. By demanding complete independence, the Tibetan liberation movement is alienating Chinese who would otherwise think that what they want (democracy, freedom of expression etc.) is reasonable. It’s certainly alienated me. From my earlier discussion, my feeling is that the Tibetan liberation movement hates China because it is Chinese and not solely Tibetan.
And independent Tibet would most likely be cut off by China. China would not trade with it or give aid to it. Export requires sea ports and there are none in Tibet, unless India would grant it access to the sea. Does that seem likely? Man cannot survive on bread alone, but he cannot survive on spirituality and dignity alone either.
On China:
Right now, ‘Chinese’ is synonymous with Han. It shouldn’t be. The Han people make up a great part of China, but China is comprised of many different cultures. There needs to be more education about all these other cultures that we don’ hear about. Han culture is not the pinnacle of civilization and should not be treated as such. No culture is the pinnacle of civilization. Cultures only grow when they take the better things from other cultures and evolve.
Other general thoughts:
Ethnicity should not be a boundary. There needs to be more connections between different ethnic groups. There should be cultural exchange, respect, understanding, acceptance of differences.
