One Minute to Address the World
I’ve got a new thought experiment for you.
Imagine you have one minute to address the whole world. You and you alone are given this opportunity. Every person in the world will hear what you have to say. You can say anything you want. You can address politics, economics, religion, culture—anything you want to say. But you are given only one minute. Sixty seconds. That’s all. What would you say? The address you compose is probably quite revealing about yourself.
I worked on my one minute address to the world for twenty minutes or less. (So there’s not a lot of thought in it.) It’s what I would say today. Tomorrow…who knows? My address is 143 words. I can say it in one minute. Here it is:
Something is wrong with us. We are broken. We are creative and intelligent, capable of scientific discovery and technological advancement; but we cannot escape our brokenness. It is evident in our alienation. We divide into groups, hate those not like us, and kill one another. We did it first with sticks, now we can do it with nuclear weapons. Hate and killing are the sins of our alienation. How can we change the world? Only by finding a new way of being human, a new way of organizing the world around love instead of power. We begin to live when we love and forgive. We cannot defeat evil with evil. Only love expressed as forgiveness can save us. Jesus Christ showed us God’s love when he forgave those who killed him. God raised him from the dead. Jesus is Lord. God is love.
I don’t know if I really like my one minute address, but it’s what I came up with. I could have been more explicitly Christian, perhaps quoting scripture, but I fear that in a global one minute address it would simply come across as religious triumphalism. Also I notice that my address seems to be directed more to leaders; I’m not sure that is a good thing, but it’s what I came up with.
The image beside my one minute address is a photograph of a crucifix on a wall in Auschwitz. Stefan Jasienski, a Polish prisoner, etched it on the wall of his cell with his fingernails. Stefan died at Auschwitz. An image of Christ crucified etched by a dying man in a death camp seemed to fit my one minute address.
I believe Jesus is the Savior of the world.
Now it’s your turn.
What would you say if you had one minute to address the world?
Post it here.
BZ