I’ve seen a lot of people ask the question in the last 24
hours, “How do we fix all of this hate?” and I wish I could answer that. I wish
I could say that there was a 4 step process and if we follow it exactly then we
should be good to go, but I can’t. But I can somewhat give myself a few
pointers on how to feel, and think, and act in this situations so that I don’t
continue a cycle of hate or a spirit of despair and worry.
We are bombarded by hate. Everywhere we go we are fed hate.
The news is hate, the comments on social media are hate, the way people speak
to us at times at work is hate, and people’s opinions are full of hate. I’m
sure someone will view this blog as hate because it isn’t what they believe. We
have skewed our vision to hate instead of love so much that we think this world
is nothing but hate. But what if we really looked at the ratio of love to hate
with real eyes and real hearts. I am of the thinking that there is WAY more
love than hate. It’s just not what we are seeing and hearing about on a minute
by minute basis.
Before I go any further I want to make sure to say that I
think that what is going on in our world is important. I think that the lives we
are losing matter. I think people matter. Souls matter. All of it matters. I’m
not trying to diminish what is going on, I’m just asking myself if maybe we
need to change our perspective so we don’t get weighed down by it all.
I wake up in the middle of the night a lot [to pee] and I
have a habit of looking at my phone to see if I’ve missed anything [I rarely
have], but over the last two nights I have been met with sad news. And it’s not
just one person talking about it … it’s thousands and millions of people and
the big stories spawn small stories and before you know it I’m scrolling for
hours looking at posts about hate and people being mistreated and
misunderstood. I see people feeling hopeless and hungry and sad and confused. I
see people giving up on the love of the Lord. I see news of people taking their
own lives because of the sadness and the despair. It breaks my heart. No, it
breaks my soul. It breaks every fiber of my being because I feel like we are
missing out on all of the love.
What if tomorrow we woke up and instead of the tragedy we
normally see the headline was, “Adam loved Jennifer so much that he sat by her
bedside all night to comfort her and love her enough that she chose not to take
her own life.” What if that was the story? What if my Twitter feed was full of
things that said, “My mom sent me a random text today telling me she loved me
and it made me strong today.” or “Today I told him I pray for him every day
and he spoke kindness back to me and now I feel like I have a purpose.” or “While
I was running this morning 5 people waved at me and made me feel seen and
encouraged.” Or what if I told you that today my boss talked to me about my
life. About living and about things that really matter because he cares. You
see what I mean? What if our conversations changed?
We are so closed off in this day and age that we have
forgotten how to love others. Don’t you think? We have been bullied and spoken
to so poorly that we have decided the only thing we need to do is love
ourselves and no one else matters. We have to “guard our hearts” so strongly
now that we have guarded them too much. I’m not speaking poorly of that verse,
I’m just thinking maybe that isn’t what it means. We need to stop guarding our
hearts so much that other lives don’t matter. We have to stop being so selfish
and closed off that we don’t love one another like we should. Stop being so
selfish, be vulnerable, and really SHOW each other we love each other. Stop
just talking about it and do it.
What we are seeing in our culture is a society afraid of
love. We are scared to speak to the homeless in fear of what they will want
from us. We are scared to love our neighbors of a different religion than us
because what if they make us feel uncomfortable. We are just plain scared and
it’s coming out as hate. We are scared of anyone that isn’t us. We are afraid to fall in love anymore out of fear of not being enough or not being loved in return. But truly deep
down I believe we want to love, we’ve just forgotten how.
I for one am tired of it. I want to love. I want to show
people love. I want to be welcoming and kind. I want the people I love to know
I love them. I want people to feel worthy and accepted. I want to feel worthy
and accepted. I want you to smile at me and wave at me. I want to get texts
from you just saying hello. I want you to like my Instagram photos. I want you
to pray for me and tell me about it. I want to hug you. I want to compliment
you. I want to do all the things that love does.
So what if our dialog changes? What if the first answer to what we
can do to fix all the hate is to change the dialog. Stop replying to hateful
Facebook posts and starting arguments and pick up the phone and call your mom
and tell her you love her just because. Stop watching the stupid news and text
the girl you have a crush on and tell her you’re thinking about her. Stop
judging the homeless man on the street and open the door for the old lady that
is walking in front of you and tell her to have a beautiful day.
There will always be people who chose hate. It's just the way of the sinful world, but when something catches fire we throw a blanket over it to smother the flames, we have to do the same with hate. We have to throw so much love over the hate that it burns out. We have to keep doing this on a daily basis. It's our duty, our obligation, our privilege.
If we want change as badly as we say we do, we have to start
loving. And loving more than just with blogs and social media posts. We have to
start loving with our hearts and our hugging arms.
You and I, we are the same and we matter.
You and I, we have beautiful stories and all we are really
looking for is someone to come up beside us, look us in the eyes and say, “You
matter. You are loved. Now let’s walk each other home.”
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