Bad cops, Antifas, and Dishonest Media

I watch what is going on in our cities.

Bad cops killing helpless black men.
Antifa terrorists and anarchists financed by Soros, destroying our cities.
A dishonest news media (yes……all of them……..even your favorite) selling a political agenda………. selling hate.

It is scary……but mostly I find it profoundly saddening. How did we get here? And……..more importantly……..how do we get out? How do we save our society? How do we heal our critically ill culture?

How we got here is very complicated. I don’t want to oversimplify; but, I think that a huge part of the problem is that we have listened to media sources that have polarized us. They have been telling us that the other guy…….the guy with other ideas is evil. We listen, because the same media source that tells us that the other guy is evil……….is also telling us that we are noble. Since we are noble and the other guy is evil, anything that we do…….anything that we say……any hate filled post that we share……..is justified.

We have reached the point where we honestly believe that using hate to fight hate is noble.

It is not. This bears repeating.

USING HATE TO FIGHT HATE IS NOT NOBLE.

It just makes you one more “hater”.

I have always believed that there is a core segment of the American people who are good, wise people. These are the people who made us a great nation……..a source of good in the world. I fear that this segment is smaller than it was when I was young. But, I also believe that it is still big enough. I am not talking about the cop with his knee on a man’s neck. I am not talking about the professional rioter burning a small business. I am not talking about the “talking heads” pandering hate to the left and to the right. I am talking about the 67 year old lady taking care of her granddaughter….the salvation army bell ringer……the church that takes food to a local trailer park.

You will not see these people on the evening news.

So how do we heal out culture? We do it by growing the core of good wise Americans. The key to doing this is the heart of the New Testament. Love your neighbor. When we do this we show our neighbor his value…….and our own. Possibly even more importantly, we show the bystanders around us the heart of God. We will not make the 6 o’clock news. We will not silence the “talking heads”. But, we can move the needle just a little bit at a time……with love. It will take a lot of us. It will take thousands of us loving our neighbor to undo the damage that one member of antifa can do in an evening. The good news? There are millions of us!

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

“Of all the commandments, which is the most important?”
“The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’There is no commandment greater than these.”

Jesus, NIV