History — Onic!
Has Moral Leadership Gone to the Dogs?
Modern times are proving what the history of mankind has already concluded many times over in the multiple thousands of years of our species’ account: Love is not the most powerful force in the universe — it comes in a distant second. The first most powerful force in the universe has, and maybe always will be, Hatred and its various tentacles of jealousies, prejudices, judging mentalities, and corruptions.
With all of our advances, we still have not learned to overcome hatred; and now more than ever, we fan the flames of its intensity, allowing it to grow and to destroy indiscriminately. We have trapped ourselves in an unrealized cycle: God looks down and wonders why mankind is so flawed. Meanwhile, man looks up and wonders how and why they were made so weak, praying for God to do something.
But He already has.
We just stopped growing, trying, and learning. Certainly there was never such an easy and powerful emotion as hatred; little matter that it is the single force in our universe that has caused man to fall so often and with such devastation each time.
People want leaders to tell them what they want to hear, and leaders keep singing the most popular songs in order to keep their positions without controversy. For this reason alone, True Moral Leadership will only come in the future from those who have been broken, forgiven, and then redeemed — that is the truth of humankind’s history and the truth of the human soul.
Those who have never been broken remain too prideful and too cautious to do any real good.
In these times, even churches, along with their leaders, proudly profess to “love the sinner; hate the sin.” What if, every time this happens, God turns his back and scowls? Certainly, He knows quite clearly from observing humans over the course of thousands of years, that once we start allowing ourselves to hate anything; hatred itself finds ways within our souls to seep in and eventually overtake all reasoning, forgiveness, and redemption.
Hatred is easy; love is very hard at times. Love takes forgiveness, trust, the ability to see another as a new soul delivered from whatever happened in the past which had caused he/she or his/her culture to spawn sin and harm onto the earth before. That takes work: work we now get an easy pass at having to do because so many causes rally for simply pointing fingers at perpetrators — and then soon thereafter, there is a bandwagon of people flocking to spew hatred and judgement; and nowhere to be found is a single portion of compassion and/or understanding.
Pride in oneself and in one’s career has taken such a large slice of our spirits, along with the energy we expend throughout our lives, that nobody is humble anymore. All decisions are made in the context of getting ahead. It is that hubris that is and throughout history always was humanity’s Achilles’ heel.
God sees therefore that it becomes inevitable that our leaders will teach prejudice and discrimination because EVERYONE wants to get to the top, and to do so, they have to be unforgiving and put on the appearance of perfection — which is a lie right from the start.
Philosophy teaches that if any part of a set is flawed, then the entire set loses its integrity. Taking this premise to its natural conclusion: how can we compromise on some of the most sanctimonious principles of the Bible and yet say we are Godly? And the corollary: who will speak out about the importance of having understanding, tolerance, and empathy for those who had fallen into the traps which desires had produced in the past? Did not Jesus come to save the Prostitute?
What if God sees this: They have come far from Jesus’s teachings and think they have not! He knows His son’s message: Jesus corrected and urged wrongdoers to follow the righteous path, but first and foremost He had forgiven them and had given them redemption. He knew the secret to mankind’s lament very well, and what if He sees it this way:
They are all one family with one shared consciousness, though they do not know it; and each of their own friends, relatives, and loved ones will fall, and will fall sometimes quite severely. It is my will to see how they will recover from that.
Even as with many of the saints, we are all sinners, and we all fall short of deserving the promises of God’s graces and love. But He has told us through the message His own Son delivered that we are not judged merely by our sins; but by our compassion in the face of our very own sinful nature, the sinfulness of those around us, and the sinfulness which we find in the world itself.
So where do each and every one of us draw the line and finally decide we will stop hating, and that we will stop turning our back on those who had been found to have fault? Who in our lives will it take for this to happen to before we have had enough?
The saints’ all learned a lesson gained from God Himself because they took the time to listen and to humble themselves, and it is this: there should never have been a line drawn in the first place. Hatred knows no bounds; and if we give it even an inch it will ruin the integrity of our entire soul. In a nutshell, this is exactly how mankind can finally overcome its own inherent weakness: as a culture, we need to stop giving in to the easy emotion of anger, endless lawsuits, retribution, and draconian punishments.
If we can somehow do the work — then maybe once and for all time, we may all learn the true power of love. LOVE, along with its strong roots of EMPATHY, UNDERSTANDING, FORGIVENESS AND OFFERING REDEMPTION TO THOSE WHO HAVE HURT US, and EVEN IF QUITE SEVERELY — should always be, and not just when convenient or when you are on stage in front of a group which you are trying to impress: THE MOST POWERFUL FORCE IN THE UNIVERSE!
It is so easy for hatred and the casting of judgment to grow from a very small thing within one person’s soul until it reaches every part of their spirits; and soon infects their family, their community, and then the entire world. How many times must God have shouted, “ME TOO!” and His calling was not about finding fault with others or even feeling anger at someone who had killed His own Son — He was simply feeling tired as Jesus Himself expressed His frustration that mankind was once again falling into the same traps it had always fallen into for millennia….
… that had always produced the same shattering results for the world time and time again. How could they still not learn? Jesus says to God, shaking his head.
A truly redeemed past transgressor will be of the highest moral quality because he has refined most things within himself and he never wants to know the scrutiny of public outlash again!!! History and the Bible prove this in a multitude of examples. Many prophets and saints had been reckless criminals or pharisees before finding redemption. In today’s world, past transgressors who have paid the price, and who have done the work necessary to repair themselves, are mostly forced into hiding and must become reclusive if they are to keep any peace in their lives whatsoever.
Offering them forgiveness and redemption must come first. If one is given redemption and then commits further atrocities, Jesus would still never turn his back on them, but he would keep them separated from his flock.
We cannot go directly to the second part of His lesson. We must first and foremost learn to love all — work at it — even finding fault within ourselves first if we cannot do so. The time has come for all of us to be not like Jesus — but to be Jesus Himself by allowing His power to flow through our spirits in order to give ourselves the strength to love even when we know we cannot, and especially in the face of the most devastating and costly behaviors and actions of mankind.
This may seem like a small difference, but it is not. It is the largest difference in the universe — because when faced with the harsh reality of how their actions affected and impacted so many people, most sane people almost immediately realize they cannot continue doing what they had done in the past.
Our younger generations will not learn from the extreme prison sentences and public hatred directed towards people who had made grave mistakes in the past — they can only learn from their own mistakes. Our show of hateful and judgmental attitudes will soon only fester an angry response to those with differences of any kind.
Longer prison sentences will not cause the guilty person to reform his ways any more than his own conscience would allow him to once facing the public’s awareness of his crime: If he is one who finds salvation and is capable of redemption, he should be welcomed back once he has had enough time away to account for his wrongdoings. This is what makes us human and not vengeance-seeking animals for God’s sake.
Once we started to draw lines about who is worthy of forgiveness and who was not (i.e. all sex offenders), many found it easy to justify drawing an endless number of lines in which to delineate, target, and then hate other subgroups. Look at the history of hatred in our country and you will see the timelines match perfectly. I do not know what’s to be done now but figure it out. Jesus was very clear –
“Brothers and sisters: Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. For the commandments, ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not covet,’ and whatever other commandments there may be, are summed up in this saying, namely, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”
Along with this, came Jesus’s follow-up lesson:
“If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and he alone. If he listens to you, you have won over your brother. If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you, so that every fact may be established on the testimony of two or three witnesses. If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen even to the church, then treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax collector.”
“Amen, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven. Again, amen, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three have gathered together in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”
It is clear to me Jesus said that even the most reviled, heinous, and distrusted/hated subpopulations within our culture, no matter what they are, deserve our love and our giving them a second chance. Pointing them out to scorn, hate, and deride, as in the Scarlett Letter, and going so far as to teach our children to show them ridicule, disdain, and violence does not suffice.
This lesson also applies for the violent BLM terrorists who spew their icy talons towards all police officers indiscriminately. My belief is such that if you choose to go against God, you will take your own future away.
“You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.”
We are and shall be judged by God and our fellow man by our current behavior, not our pasts, and not by the past behaviors of our forefathers and our ancestors. A huge segment of our population has got it all wrong and woe to the ones who have fanned the flames.
“If anyone causes one of these followers of mine who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a huge millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the open sea. Woe to the world because of its stumbling blocks! For it is inevitable that stumbling blocks come; but woe to the man through whom they come.”
We need now more than ever to find the lessons that Jesus taught, embrace within ourselves, with full knowledge, our own seemingly genetic weaknesses which permit tendencies towards hatred and disapproval, and then allow God’s higher calling for each of us to take over.
If a transgressor is truly incapable of change, his wrongful behavior and attitude will soon become apparent to the general public and by causing further harm, he would thus be kept away from the rest of the flock.
But we must start with an attitude of forgiveness and welcome even them with open arms until they prove themselves otherwise. It is only then that we will be able to do the work necessary to save mankind from the traps of hatred.
At that time, I predict that the second most powerful force in the universe will finally become the first most powerful force in the universe as it was always meant to be; that the present most powerful force will become powerless, and that the face of the earth can finally be renewed!!!
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