The Outgrowth of Hatred

Do not hate your brother in your heart...

Leviticus 19:17

 

I wait, along with the rest of my fellow Americans and others around the globe, for the news of what individual or organization planned and executed the bomb attack this afternoon at the finishing of the Boston Marathon.  I want to know who exactly it was that thought their cause or their beliefs or their power or their grievances gave them the right to kill and maim innocent bystanders - men, women and children.  What exactly fired up someone's righteous indignation and allowed them to cause traumatic brain injury to a two-year-old todder?  Who could look upon the photos of a young mother with her leg in shreds and think it a job well done.?  Who would do such a thing?

There are a myriad of reasons and emotions that drive human beings to violence and destruction, but the most potent, I believe, is hatred.  Not just your garden-variety anger, mind you, but malevolent enmity that has no boundaries and knows no restrictions:  hatred that is only mollified by the infliction of as much pain as possible on as many people as possible - that needs to hurt someone else in order to be fulfilled.  Two people were killed this afternoon, and over a hundred others have had their lives forever changed:

feet are gone, arms and legs are blown apart, head injuries are rampant.  And for what?

There are policies of my government that I am not particularly fond of.  There are religious ideas that I hold dear and others that I think are hogwash.  There are people that I don't like, and one or two that I absolutely can't stomach.  There are philosophies that I think are valuable and others that (in my way of thinking) are nothing but hot air.  There are times when I am dissatisfied with my life and other times when I believe I have been treated unfairly.  People cut me off on the highway, step in front of me in the grocery line, talk about me behind my back, say things about me that are not true, and sometimes engineer situations that give me the raw end of the deal.  

Thankfully, I have never come to the conclusion that I would feel better about any of the above if I could inflict pain and misery on other people. No, the kind of hatred that engineered the explosions in Massachusetts today was an animosity that had been nurtured and encouraged, held close to the heart, buried deep in the mind, and allowed to fester and grow until it consumed soul and conscience.