About Me

My photo
I am a pastor and a clinical psychotherapist. My life's passion is defining healthiness from a human perspective and paralleling it to the holiness of God, divine perspective. Shifting perspectives creates a paradigm that is alongside of rather than over and against. The parakalein of God and the paradoxes of humanity are redefined. Humanity is all about winning and yet we are losing ground everywhere. Divinity is all about letting go of the desire to win and the fear of loss. The Divine embraces the world with loving care regardless of anything.

Search This Blog

Kill or Be Killed, Love Your Enemies

Posted by Don Paine

This picture appeared on the front page of the New York Times on Friday, November 16, 2012.

It is an illustration of current world events where two groups justify their killing each other which in the end is "global blindness".  A "kill of be killed" orientation and world view results in "global annihilation" and is justification of that which is not "justice for all" but "death to all".

Ghandi said, "An eye for an eye orientation results in a blind world".  Additionally, an eye for an eye orientation results in everyone seeing the world with "one eye" or "one way".  If we pluck out the offending eye then see "our enemies" with an eye of love, we negotiate a cease fire.  We cease from perpetual violence in the name of justification and embrace a "justice for all" through non-violent acts of goodness, fairness and kindness.


Alternately, we see the world with two eyes.  With one eye we see the way we want to see it, the way it appears to us, and the way we justify our protective, provoked, and proactive part.  With the other eye we see the world form the other persons perspective in which we see their protective, provoked, and proactive part.  

While many acts of violence can be "justified" there is no such thing as "just violence". Violence by its very nature is injustice in action.  Love by its very nature is just and justice in action.  There is such a thing as a "war I can justify" but that does not make it a just war.  All acts of violence are acts of injustice.  All acts of goodness kindness and peace are justice in action.  Jesus and many others said, "Love your enemies".  This was not because our enemies as so lovable, or because we want to invite them to kill us, but because only love can heal a broken heart.  

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm our hostilities.
Longfellow

Only when "the eye of love settles the eye of violence will there peace and justice in our world".

In the name of the God of love and peace, may it be so!


0 comments:

Post a Comment