America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great by Carson Ben

Author:Carson, Ben [Carson, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Politics, History, Philosophy, Biography
ISBN: 9780310417347
Amazon: 0310417341
Goodreads: 16386364
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2011-12-16T08:00:00+00:00

— CHAPTER 8 —

LEARNING FROM

OUR MISTAKES

EVERY PERSON MAKES MISTAKES, so it should come as no surprise that every nation of the world has made mistakes as well. Talk with a German national about the hope their country placed in Hitler’s rise to power on the heels of the Great Depression. Or consider our own nation’s internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and you’ll agree that the question is not whether a nation makes mistakes; the question is whether a nation learns from its mistakes, builds on that knowledge it gains over time, and grows in wisdom. Those nations who learn from their mistakes will become wise, while those who repeat the same mistakes over and over again, expecting a different result, are foolish.

I certainly experienced my share of mistakes growing up. Because of the racial and socioeconomic injustice I experienced as a boy, in my anger and frustration I began to retaliate by going after people with baseball bats, rocks, and knives. One day a boy pushed me too far. I told him to back off, but he wouldn’t quit pestering me. Finally, I pulled out my knife and lunged at him, striking him in the abdomen. He fell back, and for a moment I thought I had killed him, but just then my knife blade fell to the ground. It had hit his belt buckle and snapped in two.

I ran into the bathroom and locked myself in, terrified that I had just tried to kill someone — and over something so trivial. If his belt buckle had not been there, I would have seriously injured or killed him, and I would have been on my way to reform school or jail, following the path of so many around me.

All of my life I had attended church services, and I knew — at least in theory — that God could radically change a person’s life for the better. I also knew that I had tried to gain control of my temper time after time with repeated failure. Although I was only fourteen years old, I was familiar with behavioral modification therapy from reading Psychology Today — but I was also acutely aware that we had no money for behavioral modification therapy. By that time I was a straight-A student, yet I recognized that I would never achieve my dreams of becoming a physician as long as I harbored an uncontrollable temper.

So I fell to my knees there on the bathroom floor, pleading with God to remove my temper. There was a Bible in the bathroom, and I opened it to the book of Proverbs. Verses about anger and the folly of a fool’s actions all seemed written to me and about me. Other verses encouraged me, such as Proverbs 16:32, which says that mightier is the man who can control his temper than the man who can conquer a city. I stayed in that bathroom for three hours, reading, contemplating, and praying. My selfishness had made me so angry

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