I had a conversation with my brother in law about a few blog articles I had written about erasing hate and anger. My choice solution was love but he questioned the method to reach that goal and I had no answer. How do we love when our nature has become to turn against and shy away from what we don’t understand?
I imagine a world where we are blind and without knowledge. I am not suggesting that we erase our unique features but had no knowledge of their existence. How can you hate someone if you can’t “see” the color or their skin or their disability, etc? How can you hate someone if you didn’t know, or care to know, a person’s sexuality? A sad reality I see is that it will be nearly impossible to reverse our hateful history and move forward with forgiving and loving hearts.
I started thinking about Adam and Eve. Even if you don’t believe, you have heard a story about two people eating fruit from the tree of knowledge (of good and evil). By eating this fruit, they gained knowledge of all things and were “banished” from the Garden of Eden. God is always portrayed as our Father so I thought about it from that prospective.
When I tell my kids not to do something, it’s usually for their safety or own good. If they go against my wishes, in that moment, they are “banished.” For example, if I tell my son not to touch the hot water and he touches it anyway, he burns his hand and at that point, he is no longer ignorant or innocent about hot water. Since he knows too much, I can’t keep his mind boxed in and pretend he had never burned his hand. The right thing to do is allow my son to embrace the new knowledge and not try to keep that knowledge from him.
As parents, we try to protect our children. But what do you do with a child who has all the knowledge and no longer looks to you for answers? You set them free and hope for the best.
So, I still believe that we can conquer over the hate and anger through love because the knowledge to fight is already within us. Eventually, we will get burned enough times that the light bulb will go off and we will all WAKE UP.
Look Within 