Delmar Stone: Let's heal America with 'liberty and justice for all'

I know when I was a child, I learned in Sunday School, in sermons, and from Bible study that we are all in need of healing. Today, as a man and a social worker, I grieve for the many ways we hurt each other. It's childish, and I mean that in the worst way possible.

Our best institutions are our public schools, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and libraries. They are places of healing for our bodies and minds. But, our churches, mosques, synagogues and temples are used to hurt people as often as they are to heal.

Over the past few years, I've wondered how so many people reading scripture use the words to justify hate, bigotry and violence. I think that's why most of us don't go to church, mosque, synagogue or temple.

We all know we need each other. We all get sick, most of us grow old, and all of us will die. It would seem to me that we would invest more of our time and resources into helping each other, into healing each other, into living well and into dying well.

Instead, we build a military-industrial complex, a massive prison system, a for-profit health care system that excludes millions and institutions too big to fail that take from the many and give to the few.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The Preamble is some of the most beautiful words ever written. I have it memorized. The Bill of Rights still makes me proud to be an American every time I read it. It is a new day in America and we need to maintain the momentum of our citizens re-claiming the truth of "We the People."

I am grateful we live in a democratic republic and not a theocracy. Most Americans don't understand our form of government because they don't learn enough about it, and instead they turn to religious doctrines out of fear for our future, which only further divides us. We must continue to build this magnificent, pluralistic nation using the very documents that birthed her. I hope our students will learn civics again and that we will come to care about politics more than entertainment. I hope our politicians will act less like entertainers and more like ethical leaders pursuing the common good.

Our country elected a rare man whose adult life was about healing neighborhoods. I listen to him speak and I want every word to make our Constitution's Preamble a reality. I pray he is compelled by the Creator to uphold our Bill of Rights and use our nation's influence to expand human rights everywhere.

This Fourth of July, a black family lives in the White House built by African slaves. The president's two daughters watch fireworks in the most powerful city in the world and they will not have to feel the pain of loss, of violence, of hunger, of disease that millions of African children feel thousands of miles away every single day. Another American dream has become a reality.

Our America can be healed when we care about each other as much as we care about ourselves. When "liberty and justice for all" includes the poor and oppressed here and around the world, it will truly be Independence Day.

God bless America. God bless the world.

Delmar Stone is the executive director of the Idaho Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers.