December 9, 2015

  • Put Away the Hate

    It's getting harder and harder for me to handle what's going on with our country.

    Everybody.  Please.  PUT AWAY THE HATE.

    Whoever it is you're mad at, put away the hate.  A few decades ago, when I was being introduced to the concept of forgiveness by my psychotherapist (trust me, I came from a dysfunctional family none of whose members had ever heard of forgiveness), I asked him, "How do you forgive somebody like Hitler?"  His answer has stayed with me ever since.  

    "If it's a problem for you, you have to."

    Luckily for me, I don't lose sleep at nights agonizing about the Holocaust.  It happened.  It was outrageous.  Just as slavery happened in our nation's first century of existence.  Just as Jesus Christ was crucified.  Just as a dozen al-Qaeda nutcases demolished the World Trade Center.  Those things happened.  Those things were outrageous.

    Any of those events have the power to eat at you.  If someone you love was just murdered by some thug, that fact can eat at you too.

    Don't get eaten.  If any of the horrible events are trying to eat you, you need to recognize the fact and violence isn't the answer.  Forgiveness is, as sickeningly Pollyanna as that might sound.

    *****************

    I don't remember his exact words, but I can still here Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf's voice as he was talking about getting the enemy to surrender at the end of the Gulf War in February 1991.  He got the message across that the shooting would stop when the enemy surrendered, but not until.

    If we have to drop bombs to defeat ISIS, ok, but the message needs to sound like "Give up, or we'll keep bombing."  Of course it's not that simple, because I know as well as you do that the enemy in this case has no respect for lives, not even their own.

    As anti-violence as I am, I can't think of any endgame that doesn't include bombing.  Shame on me.

    I swear to you, if I DO start losing sleep over this, I need to forgive.  Because when a person forgives, he's giving the necessary aid and comfort to himself, not to his enemy.

    Hate poisons the hater.  It has no effect on the people being hated -- be they centuries-old slaveholders or crucifiers or the shooters or beheaders of any vintage.  Forgiveness has no effect on the people being forgiven.  Its effect is on the forgiver, and it's positive and it's healing and if the forgiver is troubled, forgiveness is NECESSARY.

    ***************

    Today's post is just a series of random thoughts I'm having.

    **************

    Freedom of speech.  It's in that precious Bill of Rights but free speech is not an absolute right.  It's supposed to be against the law to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater.  Everyone knows that.

    Why isn't it against the law for Donald J. Trump to shout hateful speech when that incites the kind of Islamophobic violence that I was hearing about on the television set when I sat down to type out these random thoughts?

    Actually, I had the "free speech" thought a day or two ago, verbalized it yesterday to my minister, and typed it out just now.  And part of what I was verbalizing yesterday was the fact that I fear Trump's supporters more than I fear Trump.

    Just put away the hate.  Please.

    **************

    One last thought.  Before publishing this, I searched through a couple of dozen Schwarzkopf quotes and didn't find anything resembling the message he sent to Saddam Hussein's army.  But I did find this:

    “I believe that forgiving them is God’s function. Our job is to arrange the meeting.”

    Funny, huh?

     

Comments (1)

  • Indeed. Forgiveness is a wonderful release. It is hard work carrying around that kind of baggage. And you are so right about the hate. Someone very wise once was talking about broken hearts - they said that the jilted one who dwells on the lost lover and think of them constantly only harms themselves. The "one that got away" isn't spending any time pondering the past. They never look back. So to forgive is to get your life back and move forward. Kind of the same thing!

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