HATE HAS NO END

My dad wasn’t a preacher or a teacher, but he surely knew how to get a message across in a powerful and unforgettable way. On a Sunday when I was a young boy, he piled my two brothers and me into our car.  After five minutes on dirt and blacktop, we stopped at a house that was familiar to us all. Each Christmas, we would go there to share a portion of the gifts we received from Rock Hill Printing and Finishing Company’s annual RPFC Employee Christmas Party. The inhabitants of this house were Black, and they were our friends.

As we departed the vinyl seats of our Chevy, I immediately noticed a strange sight which I began to understand as the purpose of our short road trip. In the front yard of the small frame house was a large wooden cross wrapped in burlap and smoldering. I really didn’t understand what I was seeing. The cross was sacred in our home. My mom was raised in a devout Catholic home in Panama, and the crucifix was always displayed in her bedroom…and my dad loved to play his guitar and sing about “The Old Rugged Cross” upon which Jesus died.

But our dad had not brought us to see a mere curiosity. His desire was to teach us a lesson about hatred. Instructing us to look at the smoking wooden beams, he said, “I want you to see what hate looks like. This kind of hate doesn’t know how to stop until it has destroyed everything. Those who hate will hate you because of your mom just as they hate themselves.” With that, we loaded back into the car and returned home. I don’t remember ever again talking about what we had seen that day.  We got the message.

My prayer for our nation is that we will all get the message about the never-ending cycle of hatred, violence, and retribution and how it eats at the core of who we are as human beings. It is Satan’s work to deface the image of God in man and to erase every trace of His goodness. Racism and bigotry does that work of diminution in every form of its manifestation.

I am a believer in Jesus Christ, an American, and a son of the South. This is not that for which we were created! Born and raised in South Carolina and presently a resident of Georgia, I acknowledge our historical failures especially as they relate to racial sin.

Last Fall, I reminded a gathering of our ministers that slavery and racial injustice were never meant to be a part of our heritage.  Between 1735 and 1750, Georgia was the only American colony to ban slavery. This decision was led by General James Oglethorpe who opposed it (and opposed rum) on moral and economic grounds after having witnessed first-hand the devastation caused by the prisons for English debtors and the evil slave trade. Simply put, Oglethorpe believed that slavery and drinking rum made men “sorry” which down South referred to those who were inferior in quality or less than persons or things should potentially be.

Oglethorpe’s dream for a free state of Georgia, an American dream of equality, was far from perfect and, sadly, did not last. Like Eden, it was lost to us. That fact left us, in many respects, less than we should potentially have been.

I implore you!  Let us dream and work together for a better and brighter day…a day when hatred, violence, and injustice no longer rule our minds and ruin our hearts.