Friday, February 6, 2009

Hate.

"Above and beyond all else it must be borne in mind that hatred tends to dry up the springs of creative thought in the life of the hater, so that his resourcefulness becomes completely focused on the negative aspects of his environment. The urgent needs of the personality for creative expression are starved to death. A man's horizon may become so completely dominated by the intense character of his hatred that there remains no creative residue in his mind and spirit to give great ideas, to great concepts. He becomes lopsided. To use the phrase from Zarathurstra, he becomes "a cripple in reverse."

Jesus rejected hatred. It was not because he lacked the vitality or the strength. It was not because he lacked the incentive. Jesus rejected hatred because he saw that hatred meant death to mind, death to the spirit, death to communion with his Father. He affirmed life; and hatred was the great denial. To him it was clear

Thou must not make division.
Thy mind, heart, soul and strength must ever search
To find the way by which the road
To all men's need of thee must go.
This is the Highway of the Lord."

-Howard Thurman Jesus and the Disinherited p.88

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