It’s time to forgive. The attack on 9/11 was horrifying and thousands died in the name of Allah . Millions the world over have died over the centuries in the name of Jesus . Do you really believe Jesus is any more apt to condone our anger than theirs? He who spoke repeatedly of love and forgiveness ? We can remember without cultivating the poisonous seed of bitter rage. How many of you will ignore this because you are offended or because you just don’t like hearing it?
This is at the risk of offending everyone. You all hold onto the chains that bind you and lack of forgiveness is among them. Refusing to let it go is harmful to you and to everyone as a nation when we cast off the teachings of Christ in favor of our own thirst for revenge. We as a nation also hand over the tools of our destruction to the very ones that we fight when we refuse to forgive. There is a difference between forgetting atrocities and remembering those same atrocities without the bitterness and hate. This comes exclusively through forgiveness and can only take place in those that are willing. There is a time to grieve and a time to move past the grief and I for one will not refuse to forgive those for whom lifelong education taught no better. This does not mean that I sympathize but it does mean that to blindly hate the Muslim-Fundamentalists whose zealotry is nothing if not misguided is to refuse to understand what and why they think and believe.
We cannot effectively combat something we don’t understand and the only way to begin to understand is to forgive because then we are not trying to see through eyes unfocused by the red mist of blind rage. No one can see when they wear blinders. To forgive is to win. Among the foremost principles of love is forgiveness. Whether or not Islam promotes violence the best way to take the wind out of their sails after a fashion is to show ourselves to be the better people, like I said and maintain…To forgive is to win. No one ever enters a war or conflict with the intent to lose and yet Americans as a general rule are of the opinion that to fight a people we must hate all of them absolutely and without exception which is in essence letting them have their way. Like a backward or recalcitrant child who throws a tantrum, we must take the control out of their hands and the best way to do that is to refuse to rise to their baiting. It’s simple psychology . Would you hand a toy to a child who threw a fit to get that toy?
No. The same principle can be applied on a fundamental level to the Islamic religion. Take away their coals, and they can’t make a fire. God has been speaking to me about this at length though it was only fairly recently that I began to truly understand. To forgive is one thing and to forget is another. When one forgives they are then capable of remembering and learning from the past without helping to grow the seeds of bitterness and hate. Both seeds make poisonous plants that harm the one who grew them and everyone around them thus helping no one. It’s time for the many to learn how to be strong and in all likelihood it will be through their moments of greatest weakness. It’s time to forgive.