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Fear and the OTHERS

I'm afraid we're afraid.

We don't like what we don't know. We don't like what makes us uncomfortable. We don't want to have to think outside the box, to think revolutionary thoughts, to think very much at all...

It is very interesting.

When I see bumper stickers that say things like - everything I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/11...

When I listen to people regurgitating Fox News, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, etc (guys who are admittedly just trying to make a buck, and don't really honestly believe what they are saying even as it comes out of their mouths) like they're some sort of expert...

When everything becomes a frenetic and emotional appeal...

When patriotism is not the last refuge of the scoundrel, but the first...

When we elect politicians either because that's the best they can do, or worse, we choose the lesser of two evils (because doesn't that imply that they're both evil?)...

When I hear talk about closing the borders and starting a massive deportation scheme...

When I see people promoting drug tests for welfare recipients...

We're afraid. We are running scared and we are being driven by a laughing, gleeful media that picks up the dollars as they fall jiggling from our pockets.

I wonder when the point comes in someone's life - someone who is an otherwise rational, thinking person - when they turn over their ability to think to a smiling face on the TV or frenzied voice on the radio?

When do we abdicate our complexity to cute bumper sticker phrases and overly simplistic pithy rhetoric?

When do we wholesale buy in to the grand, sweeping platitudes of the oiled media machine and their spokespeople?

What is it that makes us so afraid of others? Those who are different from us? Those who make us uncomfortable? Those who may look different from us, or behave different, or who make a different amount of money? And WHY?!?

I just don't understand.

Interestingly, and perhaps a bit ironically, these people are really people who should know better. These are they who claim to follow the Savior. These are they who claim charity as one of their most basic and fundamental principles. These are they who claim to follow the teachings of a Man who said that the rich will hardly get to heaven... who taught that we should sell all we have and give it to the poor... who said if someone wants your coat, give him your cloak also... who taught of Samaritans and lepers and prostitutes and tax collectors and how they were the salt of the earth...

It makes me a little dismayed, frankly. Discouraged. Because these are not the principles that were taught by the Prince of Peace.

We need to overcome our fear. The only way I know how to do that is to love. To have real, Christ-like regard, respect, and appreciation for ALL of God's children. Because, at the end of the day, we're all in this together. And we are all alike unto God. Vermis sum.

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