“Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
Proverbs 22:6
Just like a wind up car, if you put people on a path from childhood, they will never truly stray from that path even as they get older. So this tells us that people are shaped during their childhood. What do we do in the modern-day to “shape” or “start off” our children? We send them to school, we take them to church on Sundays, the mosque on Fridays, synagogues on Shabbat, or any extracurricular activities that can feed our children or shape them positively. But there is one thing that we are not giving our children enough of, and that is love (The ability to love, appreciate, tolerate, and respect others).
If hate is this monstrous feeling that repels people from one another then why does it exist? If everything in this world serves a purpose, what could the purpose of hate be? Does God hate us so much that He created such an abhorrent emotion that divides and torments a society? Just like fire, hate can burn down houses, neighborhoods and even cities in all of its severely devastating rage; it would be of no use to hate a racist.
People assume that the right thing to do is to hate a racist. Hate is not meant to be towards characters, rather it’s meant to be towards characteristics. A racist is the perceived character of a particular person; however racism is the characteristic that you are using to define this person as a racist. The ‘racist’ is a person even without the characteristic of racism that is associated with him or her. So what we have to hate is this characteristic of racism.
Is this going over your head? What does it mean to hate a characteristic? How would it be possible to hate something not tangible? You can see a racist; therefore you can hate him or her. But how can you hate racism?
To hate a characteristic means to do anything you can to change it. So in our case, if we hate racism and not the racist, we would help change these people. We need the world to understand that racism is inhumane in order to overcome the horror of segregation. We need to teach people not to see the color of a person’s skin when they try to interact with them. The world needs to love a person for his or her kindness or sincerity or honesty or diligence.
Gandhi said that “An eye for an eye would make the whole world blind.”The opposite of the aforementioned sort of ‘peaceful hate’ would be to hate the racist; causing him to hate you back and stay away. This wouldn’t change anything now, would it?
We all know what hate is, and how popular it has been getting lately. So, what is the best counter against hate? It needs to be something strong and effective for people to overcome their rage.
I recently read a poem in Turkish that helped me see clearly what hate fears the most. In the brilliant poem “The coming spring” by Fethullah Gulen, the poet is describing a transition to a world of peace.
He describes what replaces things in the new world. Although this short poem is extremely comprehensive for its small length, one line stood out to me the most. The literal translation of this line is, “love and respect is surpassing hatred”. This poem is in Turkish, so in order to enjoy the genius of the poetic language, one must know Turkish. However, the meaning behind the words was meant for all people around the world.
Diving into deep thought upon reading this, I can now say without doubt that love will exceed hate one day. All we have to do is fill ourselves with love so that there is no room for even a small grain of hate to possess us.