We Are All Created Equal, Aren’t We?

Over the last months, all throughout the country, antisemitic flyers have flown around in the overnight hours. Most recently, this week, the flyers in states from Maine to Florida, Texas, and California have shown the misdirect these fools want to spread — that COVID is a plot by the Jews. Seriously?

This isn’t the first time those of the Jewish faith have been blamed for disease and other ills. Back in the 14th Century, whole Jewish communities throughout Europe were wiped out because it was thought they had caused the Black Death.

Hitler had a similar complaint about those of the Jewish faith. He spread the lie that the Jews were responsible for the economic ruin of Germany, which was really the result of the sanctions the Allies levied against Germany after World War I. Soon after, that lie, more were spread against the Jews, with them being held responsible for everything bad that was going on in Germany at the time.

Fast forward to the 21st Century. Antisemitism, white supremacy, racial hatred have all reared their heads more publicly than I can remember in any recent time. I won’t go into why I think that’s so or who is responsible, but it begs the question — Haven’t we moved past all this hatred as humans?

There have been so many movements over the years to resolve conflicts based on culture, race, nationality, language, and religion, but they’ve seemingly all failed because not enough people think it applies to them. “I’m a nice person. I don’t hate anybody.” Well, that’s not enough.

John Stuart Mills, in his 1867 inaugural address to the University of St. Andrews said,

“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”

In the 1930s and 1940s, Hitler was allowed to rise to power because the individual Germans didn’t think anything he did would impact them. They took no note. So this hatred for one religious group ended up with concentration camps, death chambers, and a horror unlike anything seen before.

Some of us are fighting back by spreading the love of Christ and his father have for humankind. It was so important to Christ that in Matthew 22:39, he said, “The second, like it, is this: “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”

Even if you’re not a religious person, that commandment is known throughout the earth and is part of the “Golden Rule,” which encompasses both verses 38 and 39.

How are antisemitism, racism, discrimination, misogynism, and hatred part of loving others as yourself? It only makes sense if the person showing all that hatred hates himself already.

Should we then feel sorry for the hateful person? No. But teaching them how to love their fellow man by our individual actions has to happen. And by ourselves reflecting that love for our fellow man, not by spreading hate as they did in the 14th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. Those efforts ended in failure but they also ended in people losing their lives.

It has to stop and it will stop. It’s the only way.