New Beginnings

It was an honor to visit New Beginnings Church in Chicago last week with Pastor Corey Brooks.

That’s what the Lord offers each of us, in our lives — a new beginning. Take off the old self and walk with Jesus. It’s also what Chicago and big cities across America need desperately. New beginnings.

Let me share a little bit about my beginning.

My grandfather was born in 1921 in the Deep South. By the time he was in the third grade, his education was over. He was forced to drop out of school and start picking cotton.

This man had every excuse to give up hope. But he held onto stubborn faith. Faith in God, faith in himself, and faith in what America could one day be.

He saw beyond the pain of his present to the promise of the future.

His daughter, my mother, grew up with segregated water fountains. She grew up to become a nurse’s aide. Year after year, she worked 16-hour days, changing bedpans and rolling patients.

When I was young, my parents divorced. My mom, my brother, and I moved in with my grandparents. It was a 700-square-foot house. The three of us shared one bedroom.

We were mired in poverty. The kind of poverty where sometimes you come home and hit the light switch, and there’s no light. I was confused and angry. I nearly failed out of school.

But my granddaddy taught me that I could be bitter, or I could be better — but not both. My mama said that we could either be victims or victors — and she chose victory.

So I finished high school. I finished college. I started a business.

Eventually, I won an underdog race for Congress against Strom Thurmond’s son in the district where the Civil War began. Don’t tell me things don’t change! Don’t tell me America hasn’t made progress!

None of us think our nation is perfect. But our progress has been palpable and undeniable.

The hope of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, and the stubborn faith of people like my grandfather, is being rewarded.

America is the land of opportunity — not a land of oppression.

But there is a problem in this country that is growing, and it is sinister in nature. There is a radical movement on the far Left. And the more progress that America makes on race, the harder they try to deny it.

Whenever their power is questioned, whenever they’re losing an argument, they exploit race and class. And the people they claim they’re helping fall further and further behind.

The progressive philosophy has a monopoly. But it’s not working. The streets aren’t safe. The schools aren’t good. For too many kids who look like us, the future is not as bright as it could be; as it should be; as it needs to be.

The far Left has spent decades going soft on crime, defending failing schools, undermining traditional values, and weakening capitalism.

And you can measure the devastation. You measure it in crime. You measure it in unemployment. You measure it in despair.

They are choosing their own power over prosperity in our communities. They choose power over safety on our streets. They choose power over good jobs, great schools, and drug-free neighborhoods.

To stop people from noticing the devastation, they try to get us addicted to the drug of victimhood. The narcotic of despair.

Progressives would rather lower the bar for people of color than raise the bar for their own leadership. They say they want low-income Americans and people of color to rise. But actions speak louder than words.

Their actions say they want us to sit down, shut up, stay mad, and vote blue.

Instead of solutions, we are offered distraction and division. What our country is truly starving for is a revival of personal responsibility.

We need to replace victimhood culture with empowerment. We need to replace a message of grievance with a message of greatness. The government cannot and should not raise our kids — but we can!

Every single day, every single one of us can be the example someone needs to see. Whatever our color, whatever our story, every one of us has a duty to own our choices. We are the masters of our fate. We are the captain of our ship.

You can’t have freedom without responsibility. We all know this. It’s the price of American citizenship.

We need to take this message of personal responsibility and empowerment to every corner of this country. And with God’s help, I pray that we can take it to the Oval Office.