Hi, my name is Aldon, and I’m a racist. I’m also sexist, and have prejudices about anyone who doesn’t look like me, like those who are disabled.

Perhaps, I don’t meet your prejudices about racists. I don’t attend KKK meetings or burn crosses on lawns. I’m actually a liberal committed to fighting for an even playing field for everyone.

Yet still, late at night, as I walk down a dark street, I get worried if a young black man shows up on the street. I feel out of place when I go to a large black church and am one of the few white people in the congregation.

When I see women, I too often think about their physical attractiveness and not often enough about the whole woman, about their wisdom or intelligence, their ability to care for others. I’m fortunate. The woman that I am married to is both very attractive as well as very wise, intelligent, and caring.

When I see a person in a wheelchair or walking with a white cane, I too rarely think about how best too be with the person and too often feel ill at ease. As I’ve learned recently from my friends who are physically disabled, I probably appear to too many of them as just another belt buckle in the crowd. It simply doesn’t occur to me to sit down when I talk with a person in a wheelchair so we can look each other in the eyes.

Yet it seems that one of the things that is even stranger about my racism, sexism and other prejudices is that I admit them and am willing to look at them. I don’t suggest that racism or sexism is just someone else’s problem. It is all of our problems, and only by looking at and talking about our prejudices can we make our world a better place.

In the theological sense, this is, or should be, part of our confession of sin. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. In the liturgy, the confession is followed by the absolution where God’s forgiveness is pronounced. God imputes us righteous. God imputes us, no longer racists.

In the psychological sense, the same applies. By recognizing our shortcomings it becomes possible to address them. Simply by being aware of them, they lose some of their power.

It is with all of this that I look at Obama’s Rorschach speech. As a person who believes that I can become a better person by admitting my faults and that our country can become a more perfect union by looking at its faults, I thought Obama’s speech was great. I’ve been a lukewarm supporter of Sen. Obama. There are many issues that I disagree with him on. Yet, yesterday’s speech firmed up my support of Sen. Obama. It has been too long since we’ve had politicians willing to tackle serious issues.

Because of this damaged political environment, it is not surprising that political commentators, like Wolf Blitzer, can only see the speech as a pre-emptive strike against opponents’ attacks. Will Sen. Obama’s speech help enough American’s transcend the mud slinging politics that inspires people to read blogs, listen to talk radio or commentators on cable news networks, but damages our country?

My friendly Obama supporters are bound to yell, “Yes, it can!” I hope they are right; perhaps hope is all that we’ve got, and Obama has staked out the land of hope quite nicely. Yet this sense of hope takes me back to my religious underpinnings. I go back to the idea of being imputed righteous. God says we are better than the petty racism and sexism that messes up our daily lives, and in saying so, we become so.

Perhaps, Sen. Obama, like other politicians I respect are saying, “we are better than that”. We are better than the mudslinging. We are better than our petty racism and sexism. We are capable of loving our neighbors as ourselves. Perhaps, by saying so, they make us better. I sure hope so.