I’m grateful to all of you who by reading these essays, week
after week, allow me the freedom to express my opinion. Thank you for
understanding that these words come from my head, and they also, very much, come
from my heart.
Today my heart is hurting. It’s not about gays, and it’s not
about the second amendment to the Constitution of the United States. It’s not
about politics, or political correctness, or any number of things I’ve heard
spouted lately that pundits say it’s about.
It’s about the basic nature of human beings, and that eternal
struggle between good and evil.
Basically, and yes, in my opinion, there are two kinds of
human beings. There are leaders, and there are followers. Now, as is typical of
creatures who for the most part live in a “herd” or a “pack”, there are far
fewer leaders than there are followers.
Most of us are followers. My authority for saying this? Most
people are law-abiding. Most of us follow the rules. Most of us may not agree
with a law, but we obey it, anyway. A lot of us don’t feel cheerful filing our
taxes every April, but most of us do just that, as well. It is the norm. If it
weren’t the norm for us to follow the rules, the laws—in short, to follow the
leaders, we would constantly be in a state of rebellion, and “they”, the
leaders, would not therefore be able to lead us.
So, since we do tend to follow our leaders, that means we
take our cues from them. We use them as our examples, and we emulate them. Now,
as long as our leaders have our best interests at heart, this is fine. And
really, to exist and survive together in modern society, we have to make that
assumption, that our leaders have our best interests at heart. That they are
motivated by a desire to serve, and they want the world to be a better place for
the children, and grandchildren, and unto the third and fourth generations.
But what if our leaders don’t have our best interests at
heart? What if instead of serving the greater good, they are only interested in
serving themselves?
Because, it’s about the basic nature of human beings, and
that eternal struggle between good and evil.
We’re capable of both good and evil. Both can find room to
grow within our hearts, but here’s the codicil to that: they can’t both grow
there at the same time. It’s true. If your heart is filled with good, you really
can’t do evil things; and if your heart is filled with evil, why then, you
really can’t do good things.
So on the one hand we have leaders who stand before us, whose
words compel us to follow them because they are, or would be, our leaders. And
on the other hand, we have this fertile battleground in our hearts, where either
seeds of good, of love, or seeds of evil, of hate can grow.
In the sixties and the seventies and the eighties, by and
large, while individual people would from time to time feel frustration, and
anger, overall, they tended to suppress it. They tended to keep on doing what
was expected, and what was acceptable, because it was expected and
acceptable. They wanted to do good, mostly, because it was good. They wanted to
make life better for others, because that was what our leaders, by and large,
extolled us to do.
We really are, most of us, followers, but here’s the thing,
and it’s absolutely the most important thing of all: we can choose who and what
to follow. We can choose good or evil. We can choose whether love grows in our
hearts, or hate does.
We are followers by nature, most of us, and we will follow
the path that makes us feel good. So if we have ceded our hearts to evil, if we
allow those deadly sins, of which anger (wrath) is one, to take root, then we
are likely to follow the voices calling out to those ugly and evil attributes
within us.
Yes, the choice is ours and the responsibility is ours. It is
ours who follow and choose; and it is ours who lead and extol—and also choose.
Responsibility lies with our leaders and would-be leaders, whose choice of words
and whose message culls the followers that feel good about what they have to
say.
Because, you see, at the end of the day, it really is about
the basic nature of human beings, and that eternal struggle between good and
evil. It’s about which side of that battle we the followers follow. And as to
the leaders and would be leaders?
To a certain extent, the blame for the slaughter of the
innocents can be laid directly at the feet of every one of them who has, in this
century, stood up at the microphone and preached words of hate, who’ve stood in
the spotlight and encouraged acts of violence against others. Who by their
words, and their acceptance, and their exhortations, tell us that it’s okay to
be evil and to hurt others. It’s okay to hate.
But the truth of the matter is, to hate is to be evil, not
Godly. Hate is the most prescient form of evil, and it is not okay, it can never
be okay.
This is not just my opinion.
This is my truth.
Love,
Morgan
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