Thoughts

For other stories, visit "Come In the House."

I Hate

April 12, 2011

I hate drugs. The illegal kind. I hate that people’s lives are so crappy that they turn to drugs. I hate that the systems that are created to help, hurt. I hate poverty. I hate the powers of our culture and world that propagate poverty. I hate the devaluation of parenthood and its responsibilities. I hate a culture that gives permission to those that have children to leave them. I hate that people are hungry. I hate that in the most agriculturally productive country in the world that people have to eat out of the back of a “food truck” or garbage bins. I hate war. I hate that it kills people. I hate that it destroys. I hate that it robs resources that should or could be used to feed and educate. War diverts resources that could provide medicine and counseling to the mentally disabled who are among those eating from garbage bins. I hate prisons. I hate that we store people like cattle in a place that often times only serves to mutate people or perpetuate the very reasons that they are there. I hate loneliness. I hate that senior adults sit quietly in their homes, the last of their family, with children who have abandoned them. Sitting there staring at a plate with no one to share their life with, no one to have a conversation with, no one. I hate that their wisdom is relegated to outdated information or dusty archives that exist but are never accessed. I hate bigotry. I hate that there are people who think they are better than “them”. Those that do, aren’t. I hate disease that infiltrates bones and brains, livers and lymph nodes, debilitating, devouring, ending. I hate abortion. More specifically, I hate the need for abortion. There are so many childless couples who grieve monthly when the little stick doesn’t change colors; so many teens whose lives are forever changed. I hate autism, from Asperger’s all the way across to the other side, whatever or wherever that is. Loving and lovable children; bright and energetic children; some content and some tortured, but all categorized and labeled, even segregated.

I hate that complete strangers are called to a hospital nursery to pick up a baby to take home and love because there are no parents who can. I hate that eleven months later that child will, through her heart and eyes, forever lose the only parents she knew existed. Abandoned.

I hate that a man offered a way of life that seeks justice and peace and love and then was killed. I hate that people claim to follow those teachings but offer little evidence of such a life. I hate that poverty and war and bigotry can be ended, can be stopped, can be eradicated but those that follow don’t, not really. I hate that I don’t follow, enough. I don’t stand up and stand in, enough. I hate that my fears drive me to ignore and disregard, to relegate and to dismiss words, life changing, systems changing words. I hate that I don’t let a savior save me, all of me: my thoughts, my actions, my heart, my relationships, my time, my devotion, my, my, my . . . I hate that I’m so arrogant that I think in terms of “my” when it is not mine. It is the Savior’s.

I am told there will be a time when there will be no war. There will be a time when this earth will become new, again, for the third and final time. I am told that enemies will be no more and love will rule the day – that day. I long for that day. I hope for that day. It is not now. The kingdom is present but not nearly enough. So we wait, and wait. The procession of a king arrives this Sunday. A day we remember when a few gathered to receive Him while on the other side of town the throngs rallied to receive the kingdom of Caesar’s power. Nothing much has changed. But it must, change that is. The world needs to change. I need to change. We need, no, I need a renewal. Maybe even . . . a resurrection.