I hate what is happening in the world right now — the political violence, the hateful rhetoric. We can’t seem to disagree without being disagreeable.
The problems of the world are too big for me. I can’t stop ICE from picking innocent people up off the street. I can’t stop the genocide in Gaza. I can’t stop anyone with a gun who decides to use it. I have no power to fix any of that.
My faith teaches me that violence is never the answer. Violence only begets more violence. Hate only begets more hate. So, what do we do?
In 1693, when William Penn began his “Holy Experiment” of Pennsylvania, he wrote: “We are too ready to retaliate, rather than forgive, or gain by Love and Information. … Let us then try what Love will do: For if Men did once see we Love them, we should soon find they would not harm us. Force may subdue, but Love gains: And he that forgives first, wins the Laurel.”
Those words seem naïve today, when nuclear annihilation is in the hands of a few unstable men, and every second person seems to have a gun. But what if he was right?
What if we learned to listen to understand, not simply to respond? What if we used our right of free speech to heal, not to wound? What if we led with kindness, not force?
“Force may subdue, but Love gains,” Penn wrote.
Martin Luther King, Jr. echoed this truth: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
Only when we begin to practice love in our daily lives will the world begin to heal.
