Thou Shalt Agree with Thy Neighbor?

Over the years I have been to enough of Jon's work dinner parties and work vacations to know I never want to drink alcohol. I once watched many women stand at the bottom of a ladder while the person at the top poured liquor from a hose into their mouths. It was disgusting to see them slurp and spill all over themselves. When you are the only sober one in the room it is eye-opening to witness the sloppy stupidity of a person who has had too much to drink. For me it was especially disconcerting to see a woman who arrived elegantly dressed with her hair pulled together perfectly to end up spitting and unstable.

So unattractive.

While there are many people addicted and affected by alcohol I see something much more sinister affecting our world. Turn on the news, listen to the radio, watch a movie or talk to someone about their family and you will find this seeping poison. 

People are drunk with anger, grudges, revenge and hate.

So corrosive. 

It comes from the right and the left. It permeates the liberal thinker and the conservative believer. It has it's hands wrapped around the necks of the white man and the black man. It is choking our churches, schools and our marriages. 

If we find at the foundation of our actions that  there is the smallest seed of anger we have to toss it aside. Being drunk with anger is dangerous and over time it becomes part of our soul. It limits our strength and slowly changes the course of our lives. It's a sloppy way to live.

So annihilative.

We are not commanded to agree but we are commanded to love.

C. S. Lewis wrote the following.

Christian Behaviour

7. Forgiveness

I said in a previous chapter that chastity was the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. But I am not sure I was right. I believe there is one even more unpopular. It is laid down in the Christian rule, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' Because in Christian morals 'thy neighbor' includes 'thy enemy', and so we come up against this terrible duty of forgiving our enemies.

Every one says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive, as we had during the war. And then, to mention the subject at all is to be greeted with howls of anger. It is not that people think this too high and difficult a virtue: it is that they think it hateful and contemptible. 'That sort of talk makes them sick,' they say. And half of you already want to ask me, 'I wonder how you'd feel about forgiving the Gestapo if you were a Pole or a Jew?'

So do I. I wonder very much. Just as when Christianity tells me that I must not deny my religion even to save myself from death by torture, I wonder very much what I should do when it came to the point. I am not trying to tell you in this book what I could do — I can do precious little — I am telling you Christianity is. I did not invent it. And there, right in the middle of it, I find 'Forgive us our sins as we forgive those that sin against us.' There is no slightest suggestion that we are offered forgiveness on any other terms. It is made perfectly clear that if we do not forgive we shall not be forgiven. There are no two ways about it. What are we to do?

for more on this subject

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/questionofgod/ownwords/mere2.html