Once the killing starts, deaths mount.
The fringes, especially terrorists on the right, have started in places like Toronto. Let’s stop, think about it, and not do it. None of us are perfect, none of us expresses divine love as we should, all of us need the mercy of God.
Let’s have mercy as we hope to have mercy.
Revenge is sweet until the deaths mount. America had one Civil War and the deaths went on and on until finally Abraham Lincoln died, because a star decided to take his Shakespeare from the stage to reality. His last role was Antony in Julius Caeser where he said “Cry Havoc! Let slip the dogs of war.” I am sure he brought down the house, that star John Wilkes Booth, when he intoned: “Now let it work. Mischief, thou art afoot, Take thou what course thou wilt!”
He did not understand what Shakespeare was saying, what Shakespeare said in Richard II and had Henry lament in Henry V: killing leads to killing and civil wars have no winner. Ask the Syrians, what is left of them.
Last week I was in Texas, Northern California, Chicago, and New York City. I heard visitors to Trump Tower from blue states speak of the fear of punishment, because of their profession and their vote. Was this a valid fear? Who knows? They had it and were careful to hide their Presidential affections. At the same time, I listened to blue state voters in a red state speak with contempt about “those Evangelicals.”
Yet I also enjoyed an evening at Astros baseball in the most diverse city in the United State and an evening at Carnegie Hall in the capital of the the world. The people were decent, diverse, and nobody could or even wanted to guess how anyone voted. We chanted for Jose Altuuuuuuuve and gave a standing ovation to a classical sitar player and the West meets East music of Philip Glass.
We went to a Korean feast with some of our very best friends, one of whom is Korean, and life was good. We met people working on educating the least-of-these and that was even better. In New York City, I lifted a pint with friends under a picture of that greatest of Americans, US Grant, in a pub where there were few voters for Grant’s GOP.
Shakespeare is right. Few things are worth civil war . . . Even the passive kind where we loath “those people.” Let’s be blunt: in places where the secular left is dominant, no quarter is given even for a chicken sandwich if produced by Evangelicals. Yet we also “lie for Jesus” and too often act as if every secularist is a Satanist.
No.
No.
No.
We must stop this hatred. Christians know better, but we are (as our theology teaches) no better than anyone else just because we are right. The Devil, after all, believes in God and he is a devil! Let us start with love. Find something good to stay about your political opposition. Give credit where due. End demonization or bullying where dominant. We are, I think, at the edge of a second civil war. God forbid we cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.
Nobody wins a civil war.
I am a second amendment, free market, low tariff, anti-racist, Republican. You may not be. My response?
Union forever: e pluribus unam.
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