As the Christ Mass approaches we tend to – are obligated to – place our most prized results of our year of labor and multiplication upon the altar, proving our willingness to sacrifice for God and thanks to God. It’s metaphysical… in a non-computerized sort of way. God, of course, doesn’t need our sacrifices, he needs the act of sacrificing. He needs that expression of love, and so do we.
There’s a lot of charity flowing at this time of year, as you surely notice. Charity is an act of selfless, as in “non-selfish” love; acts of love with no physical benefit in return. Of course those and their organizations whose appeals we may answer as Christmas nears, do their best to thank all who gave of our supply of time or treasure, but acts of charity don’t require such recognition. Thanking is certainly good manners, sometimes done to ensure future charity and, truth be known, most humans resent the lack of thanks, but it’s not a true factor in the equation of love or of its charitable expression.
We humans are beings defined, or measured, by economics. We consistently judge the values of giving and receiving, thanks for a gift… or for charity. It’s not always a healthy calculation, nor is it part of the love equation. Or, of the charity equation. Love, or charity, is an aetheric substance. What we do here on Earth is a rather crude reflection of the pure, spiritual development that happens to and for our higher selves, our non-physical selves. Except, we can’t manifest things to and for other humans without being in the physical plane, as it were. If we are, someday, accepted into the plane where our soul is supposed to be, love is an automatic manifestation, not a choice. Here, amidst a thousand distractions and evil opportunities, love and charity are a decision – sometimes a difficult one. If you find it easy to express love for others and to sacrifice for others, count your blessings.
One of the tests we must pass is how to not slip through the diaphanous membrane between love and hate. Hatred is often expressed towards ourselves, where it is most damaging. It may be as simple as a mistake, even just dropping something, spilling something… stupid stuff. Immediately we chastise ourselves in words we’d never apply to another, certainly never towards someone we love. If our spouse or child experiences something irritating, an accident, a time-consuming error that makes him or her angry, your usual reaction is to sooth and help in resolving the problem. Yet when we do something similar, ourselves, we immediately express self-hatred for our failing to do something smarter. Prudence can’t explain why it works this way, but “the force,” God, the Universe, or Life, cannot deliver the best, most fortunate opportunities to you if you are immersed in hatred of yourself, OR, toward others. It’s an equation: Love fits into it but hatred never does. Love yourself – you are a product of love and of an investment by your mother and others of love. You never deserve to be hated.
The greatest gift we can give, whether at Christmas or on any morning, is to review and refresh the love you are giving to yourself and others. Even in mundane, economic interactions like sales, the advice always is to imagine that you love the stranger you would like to have a sales relationship with, before you pick up the phone or walk into an office. It seems to make the interaction far more successful. Prudence can testify to this effect.
How different might all interactions be if every human projected love toward his or her correspondents. Unfortunately, our society and politics, even our elementary schools and teachers(!), spend much of their efforts at teaching children and grownups alike to hate others. What a gross distortion of the life opportunities God gives us every year and day.
Children, most sadly, are taught not just hatred of their race or skin color, but hatred of their selves. If born male, they are taught to forego the responsibilities of manhood and to pretend to be female; if born female, they are taught to forego the majesty of motherhood and to pretend to be male: two special forms of self-hatred. Part of the self-hatred process involves separation from parents and other relatives who won’t “confirm” their new sexual outlook. Learning to no longer trust one’s parents is a giant step toward hating them or, at least, hating their roles.
Children can be, and should be, taught to love themselves… not to hate themselves… or others. Like Critical Gender Theory, Critical Race Theory is an agenda based on hatred.
Questions of race and slavery generate peculiar ripples of hatred, essentially only in the United States. Millions are caught up in them, especially politicians of various stripes, who have learned that constant aggravation of these questions can yield political influence. Such influence is fruitful within a population of people who “enjoy” rubbing hatreds raw, including within themselves. Foolishly, politicians have figured out that hatred can be not only powerful, but profitable. Still, the strong feelings do not, and cannot, lead to solutions or transformation into positive feelings, outlooks and cooperation.
There are truths about slavery… and falsehoods. There are truths about racism… and falsehoods. Falsehoods seem to prevail, but truths about both subjects are immediately seized upon to draw false conclusions and false premises about what some true piece of history should force upon people of today. Just the fact of slavery in the past has proven sufficient reason to never stop hating, as evidenced by the renewed, and listened-to demands for “reparations.” Reparations justify hatred for white-skinned people: apparently whites owe an undying debt to blacks because of slavery. Whites, it seems, are prone to guilt over having succeeded in mastering so many sciences and skills. Not all skills, of course, but whites pioneered in many skills that not only have created comfortable standards of living and great wealth, but which have benefitted virtually all peoples on the planet. Perfectly? Absolutely not.
If we are waiting to stop feeling guilty until we are perfect, no less, we’ll wait forever. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t become better. But, are the children guilty of the sins of their parents? Only by choice and training; those who decidedly choose a better path than their ancestors, better ways to treat and interact with everyone else, skin color notwithstanding, should be respected and loved as anyone might be loved. There’s no guilt appropriate. Unfortunate and deceitful politics, however, casts all whites into the guilty column because some of their forbears owned slaves or mistreated blacks following slavery. What is owed to whom, today?
One of whites’ imperfections is an expectation that money can replace sin – the monetization of guilt. It is the fundament of perpetual welfare and the social welfare state. Perhaps handing over money for no value will convert hatred for whites into love for whites. That seems doubtful based on the “success” of the Great Society. Otherwise, every welfare recipient would run into the street to hug any taxpayer who wanders by their less-than-ideal, welfare-provided home. Nope. Giving free stuff makes only the most temporary of friendships and quickly reverts to resentment. The only “reparations” of any value or consequence to the quality of life for anyone, is teaching a person how to succeed in our culture, perhaps even helping that person to succeed for a limited time. But locking that person into perpetual victim-hood and welfare-poverty is a system designed to destroy that persons humanity and worth, yet we persist at it, waiting for the miracle socialists promise.
For their part, far too many blacks believe that destroying the society and culture whites have succeeded in, is going to make their lives better and balance the cosmic scales, somehow. That approach requires perpetual hatred and resentment – there is no love that is part of it. One doesn’t steal, loot, destroy and burn the work of others out of love. One doesn’t teach others to hate anyone, let alone a group, or to hate themselves… out of love. This is why socialism is an abject, deceitful lie: it is premised on the belief of the inability of the individual to elevate him- or herself, improving skills and understandings and esteem while teaching him or her to love the good in everyone and to strive against the bad. Under socialism, all trust is placed in others, mostly unknown.
Interestingly, America is full of blacks who have raised themselves up by working within the system and then transcending the system, leading the rest of us to better ourselves. In almost every field, great, accomplished black-skinned Americans have excelled and led. Why not emulate them instead of hating whites? Crappy politics, that’s why. Since the Clintons popped into the White House, hatred has become the overarching driver of political action: not freedom, not justice, not improvement of living standards, not wisdom in foreign policy, not budgeting on behalf of American citizens, not “America first.” Despite constant accusations from the Democrat left, most of the hatred emanates from Democrats and their allies. Yes, there are haters on both sides of the divide, but the distinction between left and right is gigantic, culminating in the Communist uprisings in 2020 and the Covid pandemic. There weren’t “right-wingers” burning America in 2020.
There weren’t right-wingers creating and pushing Covid across the planet, or creating and pushing ersatz vaccines into every body. Those were the works of the left. Why?
It wasn’t to increase individual freedom or to balance the budget; it wasn’t to prevent inflation of the monetary supply or to strengthen energy independence and the U. S. balance of payments with other countries; it wasn’t to solve our weak border enforcement, improve public safety, reduce the rate of drug overdoses and deaths or to strengthen the rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights in any way. Why would a political movement take significant, even drastic steps that weaken the United States of America?
Well, aside from enrichening its adherents, it would be to, well… weaken the United States.
Love of country makes us stronger; hatred of it makes us weaker. To govern and legislate in conformity with the warped ideas of the World Economic Forum and with the corrupted, communistic ideas of the United Nations, is to express hatred for the United States. To promulgate policies, persecutions and punishments that divide Americans into two classes – favored and hated – is to DIS-unite the previously United States: hatred.
This is the time of this most important year, when love of others, of law, of nation, of selves and of God, should be foremost in all of our intentions, yet our politics has failed us, creating problems that our democratic republic can’t solve, while rewarding hatred as the means to power. Let us pray as we see fit to return ourselves to a transcendent path, not the descendent path we’re on.