Antecdote for HatredBy Dewey MaggardWouldn’t it be nice if we could take someone like Yasher Arafat when he comes to Washington, to make a pretense of peace talk, and give give him a big pill that is an Antidote for hate. (By the way!, 1 Cor 13 especially last two verses is best antidote) There are many rulers of past ages whom we can think of that the world would be a different place and history would not be recorded as it is, had someone been able to give the tyrants a pill as an antidote for their hatred. Just think of all the trouble that would have been avoided if Nero had been forced to take one of these pills. Well of course it is a novel idea. We are learning that it is not pills necessarily that cure us. There is a force greater than anything we know that is at work to help people make a choice in their decisions. A choice in their lives for what is right. Our creator is allowing Satan to have every opportunity! We are the prizes that are at stake. Our creator doesn’t use force to have us submit our wills to Him and make Him Lord of our own lives.
We have starving people in many places around the globe. We have many tragic problems within our own society. Yet with all of these sad scenes, we have a proud pompous group of people who somehow have gotten the upper hand within our government in the name of science. I am speaking of NASA or the Space Program, having just learned of the billions they have at their disposal to try and place a camera on some distant object in space. There are many other groups that get grants for trying to find out where we originated.
To what purpose may we ask? Oh let us not question science. After all science is now able to clone sheep. In our news today, they are seriously speaking of cloning human beings. Anything goes in the name of science. Look at us, we will reach unto the heavens- We do not need a God! Look what we can do! This is what science is selling a gullible people.- like sheep being led to the slaughter. It does I think serve God’s purpose to let mankind go so far with the hope that from what he has seen, he will come to his senses. Man has seen that it can take 4 years to go across a heavenly body at the speed of light. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second. Now can you phantom this? All I know is that man can not live long enough to accompolish what he is pawning off to the world. I do think that man will be brought low in the near future. He is placing himself in the same bilegerent obdurate rebellious nature of those people who went about building the tower of Babel. Look what happened. Some of you know that story.
Have you ever tried launching a difficult question to strangers? I mean a face to face encounter. I have on a number of occasions. In recent past, my favorite question to strangers including children 9-years to teens is this?
If you were given one thing within your power to do- to make the world a better place to live in- what would you do?
The answers are very interesting and the best answers in my opinion come from the younger children 9-12 in ages.
One little girl says, I would stop divorce. Another slightly older brother says, I would stop war. Another smaller girl says she would fix it so everyone could have a nice home. The grandma who was with these children when this particular question was asked said she couldn’t think of what she would do? She hadn’t given it any thought. As I write this. I ask a cashier in a restaurant today this same question. This lady was probably middle forties. She said “Boy, what a difficult deep question? ” I have never given it much thought.” When I tried to get a spontaenous reply, she said, no I will have to think on that one.
The children’s answer to me expressed a connection for love, or a condition that could bring about love for fellow men by stopping war. I think these children had the key to what societies problem is today- a lack of love. It is a lack of love which creates all the things which are unpleasant to us and eventually brings chaos, frustration, anger and even despair that gives birth to the opposite of love. I do not think anyone will disagree that hate is the opposite of love. Everywhere we look we are seeing hate. Our daily news is filled with terrible crimes.
Groups of people who live side by side are daily trying to kill one another because of hate. There is such an intensive hatred these people only make pretense of peace talks, when they have no intentions of peace. Their hatred is that intense. One example of this is the Israel and Palestinian conflict which has been going on for well over 50 years. Don’t you think if they had really wanted peace, that in all of these intervening years, they could have found it? Perhaps it is not that easy? Man’s natural tendency is one of a rebellious nature. When it comes to someone close to him, he is capable of showing compassion and even love. Yet, when within a few yards of his home, there are people living in their homes peaceably that he hates- and wants to kill-and in fact does kill even to the extent of suicidal attacks on their enemies. I have wondered what could be a deeper hatred than for a people to hate so intense they are willing to kill themselves to kill their enemy.
Now do you think those figures in a government who encourage such behaviour learned this hate from their mothers or from members in their own families.? I dare say these leaders in the middle east did not learn this hatred from their mothers or their sisters or brothers. However, in our day and age it is not uncommon to see hatred among close family members. Then where does this hate come from? The answer to this question goes back to when Satan with his evil angels were expelled from heaven. There has been chaos on this earth ever since.
The first murder was committed by Cain killing his brother Abel. All because of disobedience and a wrong choice.
You would think after all this detailed histories we have from the earliest recorded history, we could learn something from it. From ealiest records, we have details of wars. We do not have details of rulers bringing love to their subjects. What we have is written records of how a certain king subdued his enemies and forced them to pay tribute to him. Now ask yourselves why did he do this.? On the earliest tombs, we see frescoes of these kings with their clubs overrunning their enemies with their horses and chariots, killing anyone in their path. The blood flows and this King boasts about how many he has killed or how many he now has paying tribute to his majesty. Those family members of those who were killed by this King are not likely to look upon him with love- only contempt. Yet, this King does not care because he has control. I am reminded one Fresco that many of you who read this have probably seen.
It is the scene of an Assyrian King holding on to two captive kings with leather thongs through rings in their lips with sharp spear ready to gouge their eyes out. WE learn through their records, this is exactly what they did.
This is of course a gruesome site and we have difficulty imagining this kind of cruelty when we see it in a painting or fresco. yet with today’s television, a human life is merely something that can be snuffed out in a blink of an eye.
WE speak of the barbaric practices of ancient peoples who threw people to the Lions. Our society is really no different today- if it were, we would not have such violence and killings taking place on television and in the movie houses. In truth, human nature is so depraved, it seems to enjoy seeing killing. Again, I say if this were not true, then why so much of it on our screens for young minds to absorb. Hate, hate.
When I was drafted for World War 11, it wasn’t long before we learned that our lives depended upon our own ability to be able to kill the enemy. Our commanders, were so intent on our getting this message, that they showed us film of our enemies killing our own boys. This was of course to instill hate. After you saw several such films, you were indeed angry. The irony of this is, that you learn from prisoners of war. that their parents and brothers and sisters were praying for victory, they were praying for these prisoners to not be in harms way, for their lives to be spared. They were praying to the same God who our own families were praying to for our own safety.
I recall being in the barracks with one young man after his ordeal with the enemy. He woke everyone up at night screaming and sobbing. Why was he doing this. Because his conscious was speaking to him about the fact that he had locked Six German prisoners up in a pill box and thrown the key away. He was no doubt correct in assuming they died in that pill box as all the troop movements went past leaving them locked up. Even though these Germans had been his enemy, the realization that he had taken their lives in this manner was eating on him. Here was a man who had compassion for human life. I was not part of this scenario; I only witnessed the behaviour of this man after he had come back from the combat. I witnessed many terrible and tragic events connected with men from the battlefield in the tank corps, in the aireborne divisions. in the infantry. The expressions on their faces told too much. They were still haunted by the stinch of death all around them. Why? all because of a few politicians who have intensive hatred for mankind- and through adroit manipulations were able to lull a whole society into following them into mass killings. It is as we know, demons at work who bring about this kind of hatred with tragic results.
I spent several months as a buddy of a man who had spent much of his time attached to the General who was called “Blood and Guts, General Patton,. These men went through a hell on earth if there ever was one. It took several months for this man to be fit for society again. What a wonderful day it was, when I was witness to his wife meeting him after almost 4 years absence.. Gracie was her name. The service furnished him living quarters off base for a few weeks before finally giving him discharge- with me as his best buddy, I got to see first hand how intensive the opposite of hate can be. How this couple loved one another. How Leonard valued the life he had been spared to live. The same spirit was with his wife Gracie. How sweet and precious was life to these two. I corresponded with him for several years through three children up to age 15 for the oldest. Somehow we lost touch overthose later years through each us moving. He said to me many times. I guarantee there were no atheists where I was. For him personally, it was only by the Grace of God that he came home in one piece- even though and 88 shell took part of his fatigues with it.
When I see young people today who take for granted the freedom they enjoy or those who protest against actions of men in service,. I feel sick. It is mankinds enemy who is doing all the dirty work on both sides of whichever war it is.
One of the most foolish inexplainable situations we see in our modern world is the inability to have peace with close neighbors. I am thinking of Ireland with these words. This hatred between these two factions over there has been going on for centuries. It strains our language to think of a word to express this hate. Diabolical comes to mind which means fiendish. What can be worse than tossing flaming objects toward your fellow human beings and
setting fire to their homes. What can be worse than having automatic weaponry firing bullets into your loved ones and leaving mangled bodies in the streets. The only excuse these people have for their enemity is Catholicism verse Protestantism. This thought brings us back to the origins of problems within the human family.
Let us think about our civilized society where we live now and think of what we know about it and how we came to be here. We have a purpose here- How we handle ourselvs in this great conflict between good and evil, will determine how we spend eternity. May we set our eyes on that place where there is no more tears, no more sorrow, no more pain. It will be a place of eternal security with the one who created us. We are heirs to His Kingdom in the land of eternity- where we can not even imagine of the wonderful things He has prepared for us. It is sad that too much of humanity is making the wrong choices- May those who read this and including myself make the right choices. ####
