When Fear Leads to Hate

"Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering." -Yoda

The famous line in Star Wars also rings true in real life. In case you're one of the few who has never seen Star Wars the character Yoda was referring to "the dark side of the force" while speaking to a young man trying to find his way in the universe. It does however apply to our lives, especially in these times.

Anger is a secondary emotion. That is to say that anger wells up from other feelings such as fear, sadness or hurt. If left unchecked this often leads to hate. Our world is not lacking in things that hurt us, make us sad or cause us fear. Because of this we look at a people group different from our own where some are causing hurt and it makes us sad, angry and fearful. It's understandable of course because most of us do not have any frame of refrense to tell our emotions to feel other wise. When people are attacked by a wild animal, such as a tiger for example, with little to no frame of refrense humans tend to fear all tigers and hunt them all forgetting that tigers are vital to our world eco system and never bothering to learn about the tourter that caused the animal to attack.

Of course people are not animals. No humans have even more value....and yet we end up hating each other. We label anyone from a particular group as evil and deserving of any and all punishment that we can dish out. While our actions have consequences it is important to remember that those in that group are in fact individual human beings. Lives that matter to God and therefore should matter to us.

It breaks my heart to live in a time where so many who claim the name of Jesus continue to allow fear to lead to hate without ever looking past the masses to see the humans made in the image of the same God we claim to worship. Yes there is evil in the world. Yes we must fight evil where it rises but may we never ever forget that while we wrestle against evil those created in the image of God must be treated with respect and dignity. (Yes even when they do not show us the same curtisy.) Jesus did not say do to others as they do to you. He said "do to others as you would have them do to you." It's a vastly different statement. One that goes against our very nature. It's easy to treat others the way they treat us. As Christians we are called to a much higher standard. To love unconditionally, not just our family but everyone.

I challenge you to go out of your way to meet someone very different from yourself and your values. Spend time with them getting to know who they are, what they believe and what they value. Yes you will find you disagree often but you will also find that each person you meet has all the same needs as you do, not the least of which is love.

Don't allow fear to bring you to hate. Hate is leads to the dark side.