Hunt Out The Good….

“Hunt out and talk about the good that is in the other fellow’s church, not the bad, and you will do away with all this religious hatred you hear so much nowadays.” – Will Rogers, 11 March 1923

This quote from Will definitely applies to the churches in the U.S. but it equally applies to many other things that are problematic in our country today.  As I commonly state on my other blog over at RedLetterLiving.net there are currently more than 39,000 different versions of the Christian church in the world. Most are the result of splits around different beliefs about this or that. We seem to always be looking at why we should be different and split rather than what we have in common. If we only took Will’s words to heart I think the number would be vastly different.

The political parties in this country have now devolved into hatred for each other over our differences. We can no longer seem to come together for what we find good in ourselves. We no longer seem to be able to compromise. Much of this division is totally unnecessary if only we would swallow a little of our pride in believing that we are the only ones who have it right about  this or that.

I have found that sometimes it is better to just say “I know this is not the way I would have done (fill in the subject) but that’s ok. Not everything in life has to go totally our way in order for us to be happy. When we insist on that happening then we most assuredly doom ourselves to frustration and constant bickering. That is not a way to live during our brief time on this earth.

About Fear & Hate….

I want to add one further thought about fear while it is fresh on my mind.  There is another basic emotion that outweighs fear as being more destructive to any person or society and that is hate. What little hate I have been exposed to in my life truly scares me. It is a dark side of life that I don’t ever want to get to know on anything but a superficial level.

Every once in a while I will glance through my spam queue  on this blog to get a feeling of what the trollers are ranting about. Ninety percent of the time what they seem to say is based on fear or hatred at one level or another.  It seems that hatred is endemic in their lives.  I’m sure they expect me to hate them back for their mostly spiteful words they call me but in reality I try my best to do just the opposite. I pray that they find some peace in their lives and that their hatred does not consume them as it seems to do to so many.

It troubles me that so many people in this world seem consumed by fear, anger, and hatred. I believe that all three of these emotions are critically linked. Much of the feelings that probably start out as fear develop into anger and then finally caustically end up in hatred. I don’t believe that hatred is something that any of us are born with. Love and hate are choices that we make in our lives. Most chose some level of love but unfortunately some poor souls go the hate path instead.

It seems impossible to even begin to have a dialog with those who are driven by almost any level of hate. I just don’t want to be exposed to even the superficial level that I find in some anonymous comments.  If I thought there was even an iota of a change to ameliorate some of the hatred I sometimes see in that queue I might be tempted to begin a dialog with some of them but from past experiences I have found any attempt futile. That is why they automatically end up on the spam queue.

Fear and especially hate are such destructive emotions it is down right scary to be exposed to it. It is truly the dark side of life! I’m sure this post will bring out a few of those who are filled with hate. All I will say to you is that I love the person who is underneath that veil of hatred if only you would let him out once in a while you would see the world is not as dark or scary or evil as you are convinced it is.

These last four posts have been emotionally draining for me so I am going to try to stay on the light side for a few days. God bless all my readers, even those who are currently filled with fear, anger, and hatred…..

Another Republican Moderate Gone… “The center cannot hold”

Source: First Thoughts: The center cannot hold – First Read.

“I have reached the conclusion that the atmosphere today, and the reality that exists in the House of Representatives, no longer encourages the finding of common ground”

“I have to say that I’m frustrated by how much we — I mean the Republican Party — are willing to give deferential treatment to our extremes in this moment in history,” referring to Michele Bachmann’s political witch hunt against a top State Department aide.

It must be obvious to even the most radical Republican that the GOP has changed remarkably in the last decade or so. The middle has simply vanished from their party. That is certainly obvious to yet another moderate Republican who has been driven out of his party. The extreme right-wing fringe continues to put the GOP into a stranglehold that will likely cause their demise unless the moderates can wrench control from them in the coming years.

As I have said before this era very much reminds me of the McCarthy years where a small group of small thinking Republicans kidnapped their party. It was several years before the moderates finally brought sanity back to that body.

Even though the founders did not conceive of a two-party system when they formed this country I thoroughly believe it is a bedrock part of our success as a nation. When differing philosophies are debated and compromise is reached it usually results in a better bill than if only one viewpoint is considered. But the key word here is compromise.

When one party starts treating the other as evil something has gone eschew. The hate that now dominates our politics is threatening our very existence as a nation. Will sanity come back to the process before it is too late?  That question is very much up in the air with me right now. The only hope I see for fixing this is for another party to rise up and replace the currently very narrow minded, often hateful GOP. I truly wish it were but nothing short of complete implosion of that party seems even possible right now….

But what do I know….

Religious Malevolence…

It greatly saddens me to see the degree of religious malevolence in the world today. I am particularly saddened by the Christian variety; Jesus taught us otherwise. I need to go no further than my Facebook page to see a proliferation of it!. The Christian Bible, like most other religious documents teach us to love one another; to take care of each other. So to see those who call themselves Christians spouting off mean spirited and sometimes even hateful words at those who they disagree with either politically or philosophically is very painful for me. It is just as painful as seeing what Al Qaeda has done with the words of the Muslim Koran. Since I am a follower of Jesus Christ I expect Christians to rise above malevolence.

While Facebook is a valuable resource for us to stay connected with each other it also unfortunately provides a forum for words that do nothing but harm human relationships and institutions. I am not talking about those few wackos out there that spend their lives focused on hating others; instead I am talking about my friends, my neighbors, my fellow Christians. I am focusing on the supposedly Christian ones in this post. I daily read the words of Jesus and they tell me to love everyone, even my enemies. It tells me to act in a way that makes others wonder why I have so much joy in my life. When I see other Christians trashing people in the public forum of Facebook and similar sites it puts a bad face on the person of Jesus. When I see other Christians using malicious words towards others I wonder what those in the secular world think of that.  I imagine it is something like  “Oh those Christian hypocrites are going off the deep end again!!” So instead of projecting God’s love on others they are espousing the opposite with their public words.

Maybe they need to spend more time reading their bibles and less time spouting off in public forums. That is especially true for the clergymen I see there. Yes, there are others of different religious beliefs that are doing more than criticizing those outside their faiths but that does not mean that Christians should do likewise.  An eye for an eye is old covenant talk that was replaced with “love your neighbor as yourself”. Let’s never forget that. Trashing others not only puts a bad face on you it also puts a bad face on the Body of Christ.

Is the Internet the cause of much of today’s "hate" talk?

I have grown totally tired of the comments sections that follow many of today’s new articles on the Internet. If it were possible I would blank them all out. We used to be a nation of civility. At least most of us didn’t get into each others faces  to scream and rant.  That civility seems to be a thing of the past the last few years. I don’t think I have seen even the most urbane article on the Internet that is not followed by someone totally dissing someone else. I imagine, or at least I am hopeful that if the person who is hidden behind some anonymous screen name were really talking face-to-face with someone they would not say the words they do on-line.

There has been a lot of studies that show that “mob mentality” is a result of being able to do something without being identified as the person who did it. It seems to bring out the animal instincts that are embedded deeply down in most of us. If most of the news agencies required the person who comments on the articles to provide his full name, phone number, email and snail address I imagine most of this hate talk would be pretty much a thing of the past.  At least I hope it would.

I am convinced that this on-line hateful rhetoric is at least part of the reason for the recent Tea Party rise. In the past there was at least some basic level of civility in our society even among opposing politicians. Is that now a thing of the past? Are we doomed to the current level of discourse in our world?  One of the things I admired most about my hero Will Rogers was that he could bring issues to the surface and still like the person he was talking about and treat them respectfully. His famous quote was that he never met a man he didn’t like.  I try to follow his ways but I too must sometimes admit that I probably go too far once in a while.  For that I apologize.

But what do I know….