An Old Homestead, Hot Springs, Arkansas
Reading about the killer of the Emanuel Nine’s worry that these martyrs were “killing whites to take over” sent me to the FBI Crime Statistics Table. This mistaken idea comes from the various hate groups the killer associated with. They reject the other, the different. They see themselves as good and others as evil.
The statistics tell a different story from their fear mongering. We tend to hang out with folks like us, so we tend to kill people like us. So we can quit worrying about the “other,” for it’s the near at hand who looks most like us that’s likely to do us in! Only rarely will an opposite be the source of our undoing.
Maybe this is why we have a difficult time accepting our “dark side.” We can try to keep this other at bay by excluding the hated other or by practicing some form of ritual purity, such as clean eating or avoidance of some food groups. We may even avoid alcohol, even though we aren’t addicts or have enough medically prescribed chemicals in our bodies to make drinking unwise. We can demonize the other to make ourselves appear angelic, but if we strip away our masks, we are all the same underneath.
We are all human, we are all in need, we are all incomplete, all less than perfect in love, and all in need of the saving grace of God. If some hate so greatly, may we love ever so strongly.
“There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” ~~ 1 John 4:18-21
FBI 2013 Crime Statistics Table
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