Reaping the Whirlwind

"Where there is hatred, let me sow love." Why? Why do we hate? Why do we choose to believe the worst of one another? Why do we suspend disbelief and choose to believe what is not true? Three murders in three weeks. Hate crimes, whether or not they will be so determined by the courts. Of course, all murder is a hate crime, in one sense or another. But these three, the military recruiter, Dr. George Tiller, and the security guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum this week, have this in common: their killers were not at home with truth. Delusion. Virulent hatred based on the choice to believe what is not true. America is not at war with Islam or all Arabs. Late-term abortions are not frivolous. The Holocaust did happen. We choose to hate. We choose to be intolerant. I don't know why. Do you? Theories I have, of course. Fear. Convenience. Laziness. The need for control. The need for surety. Greed. Jealousy. Poland knows too much about hate. The most hideous hate crimes imaginable were carried out by Nazis on Polish soil. Auschwitz. Treblinka. Majdanek. Sobibor. Those are infamous. They really did happen. The barracks and barbed wire at Auschwitz still bear grim witness to that reality. The crematorium is still standing; you can go inside it. Hate. Our human nature is profoundly perverted at times. Our logic is skewed. Our fears provoke us to irrational conclusions. We choose to believe things that are not true because it serves us somehow. Nazi's chose to believe that Poles were inferior, sub-human, that Jews were responsible for all that was wrong in the world. What to do? Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. was a testament to awful truth. Dangerous, disturbing, disruptive truth. What to do in the wake of this tragedy? Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Tell the truth. Hate kills. It reaps what is sows. In response, I can only think to pray, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace....where there is hatred, let me sow love."