Hard To Keep My Mouth Shut

I've got a bone to pick with a few people. 

When I get up in the morning to relax with my morning coffee and scroll through my social media sites, it becomes harder and harder to stomach some of the "hate speech" I see everywhere.

Just this morning, in less than 5 minutes of scrolling on FB, I read how one person believes, honestly believes, that Muslims are going to take over America and put everyone else in concentration camps. THEN.. another person says that homosexuals need to find their own religion and not consider themselves Christian if they want to get married. 

*smh*

That's just the first two posts I read.

I can't people... it is too much. 
Of course, I respect the rights of these people to express themselves, but what really gets my goat is that I have allowed this into my life. Really, it is not just that, it is that I actually know people who think this way.

WTH?

There was a time, many moons ago, that I voted Republican. Back when being fiscally conservative was the biggest issue. I agreed with that. Then something happened. There was a shift from just being a Republican or a Democrat. Suddenly it became, "I'm a conservative" or I am a "Liberal." Honestly, I've always considered myself to be an Independent. I decide according to the issues, but now there is this ridiculous spread of cruelness and ignorance that I can hardly take it anymore.

I grew up in the South and unfortunately, I was exposed to some deep seated racism, homophobia, and other types of hate related to anything that is not conservative/protestant/christian. I learned to tread all of those waters very carefully. Honestly, it took years and years to learn how to just turn the other cheek. Try being a Catholic married to a Muslim? Try being in favor of Healthcare & Immigration Reform? This is the land of ZERO tolerance.

I have chatted with some other friends, and because they tend to live in a little bubble downtown, they do not get to experience what I see. I am from here. The people I grew up with never left. I have access to their world views and let me tell you - it is limited and extremely scary. 

How do you fix it? How do you educate those that have formed such a hardcore opinion with such a limited scope of what the world is really like? The same people who scream we need better education for our kids, never really searched for education for themselves.

Yes, I realize, this is coming off judgemental, and I don't want it to be. I am just expressing how the ignorance is overwhelming. 

Mark 12:28-30

And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength…”

  

Mark 12:31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

You may ask yourself, why don't you just delete these people? In all honesty, I probably won't. Because maybe.. just maybe... from time to time... I can share something that will educate them, open their minds to a new way of thinking, and in my own little small way, create a better community to live in. 

With that.. I will walk away and simply take a breath. I'll admit, my blood begins to boil some mornings, but I have to remember to simply continue to live. I believe St. Francis said, "Preach the gospel at all times; if necessary use words."

There you have it. ;-)