Love

            I don’t usually do this. I keep God in my life, but quietly. Sunday’s gospel, though, was the story of the Good Samaritan; and it got me thinking about the things going on in the news lately. I think everyone knows the story, but the crux of it is: A guy gets jumped on the street and robbed. A Priest walks past, and crosses to the other side. A Very Important Person walks past, and crosses to the other side. A foreigner-someone of a different ethnicity and race than the injured person- stops, cares for his wounds, takes him to an inn and pays for his room, with promises to return and pay any remainder due on the bill.

            And there’s the moral. The guy who was different, the guy who was visiting from out of town, the guy for whom it was most inconvenient to stop, is the one who went out of his way to help. He spent his own money, his valuable time, risked the same fate happening to him as a foreigner, to help someone in need.

            There it is. How often do we notice the person beaten in the gutter? More often; do we stop? No matter your religious affiliation, all creeds endorse compassion and generosity. However, we don’t, as a society, take the time to see the argument from the other side. We’re so busy aligning with a hashtag that we don’t stop to think about the greater good. I don’t think there’s hope for us as a civilization until we can see each other beyond the hashtags. Supporting one movement shouldn’t-and doesn’t-mean that you don’t support another movement. It means that you have compassion for another person’s circumstance that may or may not be different from yours. I can stand with the oppressed and discriminated against in #blacklivesmatter while still believing that there are altruistic souls who sacrifice to keep us safe and stand with #bluelivesmatter. I won’t negate their need to be represented by screaming that we all matter, because if we all believed that, none of those hashtags would exist!

            If you’re a Christian, you preach Love. Not for some, but for all. Jesus spent an awful lot of his short time with sinners and outcasts. No religious manuscript, that I’m aware of, preaches “eliminate all people who are in any way different from yourself”. If that were the case, we’d each be alone on this earth, because as far as I can tell, each one of us is a special snowflake, contrary to Tyler Durden’s philosophies. Gandhi said that no culture can live that attempts to be exclusive. We can’t weed out the “different” and expect to survive as a race. He also said that it is easy to be friendly to your friends, but to make friends with your enemies is the heartbeat of true religion. Basically, open your eyes and your mind, and you may learn something new. A difference of opinion doesn’t have to mean the discussion is over. And, most importantly, a discussion doesn’t have to end with all parties agreeing-it just has to end without the parties trying to kill each other. When did we forget that?