Violent confession
I believe we have an appetite for violence. All of us. It’s a human condition.
Mix that human appetite for violence with the human longing for justice. Now you have a perversion that is ripe for picking by cults of personality, politicians, religious fanatics, and the like.
I’m not writing about insurgents, protestors, or terrorists.
I’m writing about me and you.
If you’re an American like me, you have the luxury of living in a nation that spends $601 billion of your money to send someone else to assassinate, bomb, shoot, and torture without getting your hands bloody.
If you’re a white American like me, you have the luxury of living in a neighborhood far from the despair, poverty, and violence on the other side of the tracks. And when you’re afraid of someone crossing the line and threatening your safe neighborhood, you have a government that spends $80 billion to “institutionalize” the perpetrators.
We are all participants in violence whether we are ordinary citizens or terrorists. Whether we do the act ourselves or pay someone to do it for us.
Thus far, the only solutions our politicians offer include more and new ways to do violence. Our enemies make the same offer to their constituents.
The problem is not the politicians; the problem is us.
We accept that violence is the solution. Indeed, we demand that violence be the solution. We have an appetite for destruction. We are sick. All of us.
This is precisely the point at which our Creator God says: “Come out. Come out from all that. You, like me, see the sad state of human affairs. Why beat your head against the wall any longer? Why keep conflating the problem and the solution? Your basic instinct is violence, but you are made for something else, something better. Why not be a peacemaker?”
To my fellow believers in The Divine and people of faith: Why not? Why not make it our passion and purpose to make peace far and near? Why not “stand in the gap” for humanity? Why not follow the pattern of Jesus Christ who refused violence–even in the name of justice and self-defense?
If our governments will not make peace, why not make our own peace in our communities and in our warring countries?
Why not risk our lives for this? We risk our daughters and our sons lives every day in the name of violence? How is risking our lives for peace any worse?
Why not beat our swords into plowshares? Why not replace rhetoric with tenderness and love? Why not bless those who curse us, pray for those who persecute us, and take care of those who take aim at us?
It’s not because it’s impossible (if we truly believe God).
It’s because we don’t want to.