(This is to be my last blog post for a while as I take a pause. The pause is to allow me to research how to produce a better interactive blog. Hopefully I’ll be back to posting content on retirement in a few months.)
There’s nothing unique to retirement in this post…..
Local, national and global initiatives to eliminate hate and boost kindness can be found everywhere- both government and privately based efforts abound. A quick internet search highlights dozens of these efforts to replace hate with acts of kindness. It’s a beautiful collection of efforts with many positive outcomes.
Eradicate Hate Global Summit | The World’s Most Comprehensive Anti-Hate Conference
Centric to these efforts is identifying root causes of hate, and whether humans are pre-supposed to hate. These are mostly secular efforts founded on human-centric philosophy and ethical/moral standards. They include efforts to understand differences/ commonalities between anger and hate. It’s complex, and I won’t pretend to have expertise in this study. Various sources agree, generally, that anger is temporary and is easier to overcome. There’s much less agreement as to whether hatred is pre-supposed or learned.
The problem with these efforts founded on human-centric philosophy and ethical/moral standards is that these “standards” shift- in other words, they are not standards at all. We see numerous examples of what was acceptable 20-40 years ago, not being acceptable today, and we will continue to experience these “shifting sands”. Efforts to sustainably replace hate with kindness based on such a fluid foundation will ultimately fail. It has so far.
It’s easy to agree that hatred is bad and kindness is good. But unless we have ethical/ moral standards that don’t shift with time, we won’t be able to identify effective, lasting means to replace hatred with kindness.
Enter Galatians Chapter 5 of the Holy Bible (For this, I use the New King James Version). While I encourage reading the full chapter, I selectively edit two parts below:
“Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery,…hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries, and the like;” (verses 19-21)
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.” (verses 22-23)
Hate and anger have been with us since Adam and Eve had their first two children. Where and how do you think Cain developed the hatred/anger resulting in him killing his brother Abel?
The key is not to try replacing hate with kindness, but rather to replace the flesh with the Spirit. So how do we do that? I can tell you Step #1 of that transition- subject of a separate post. My friend, I’m still trying to accomplish Step #2.