Martin Luther King Jr. said, “I’m concerned about a better world; I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood and sisterhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder… Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.
Tag: violence
“What the world needs now is love, sweet love, that’s the only thing that there’s just too little of….” So goes an old popular song.
The belief that love is a finite commodity has infected the world with a bullying mentality. Wounded hearts beget heart-wounders and so it goes. But what if love was not a finite force but an infinite resource to wash away all the world’s wounding? What if we knew bland indifference could be assuaged by tender attention, blunt rejection by joyful acceptance and blind malice by immense, intentional kindness?
All the monotheistic religions tell the story of a tempter inducing the 
first humans to be disobedient. The Torah and Bible show a serpent in this role and the Qur’an presents a jinn named Iblis as the one who first approached Eve and made her aware that there was something she didn’t have. The serpent suggested that Eve wasn’t as good as the gods. Immediately after she took that idea in (bit the apple) her contentment disappeared, her peace of mind fled. The serpent planted the idea with Eve that she was somehow inadequate. “But I’ve got something for you that will fix it,” the serpent promised.