Call Your Friends Fools

The road to genocide starts when there is a great disconnect between two opposing sides, when social pressures and our lack of maturity sever our ability to weather the storm of our differences; it starts when We the People lack friends who hold positions that we think are foolish. Any nation where there exists a super majority of people who do not have such relationships, the stage is set for destruction. This small degree of separation is enough to wedge an ever-increasing gap through our humanity that leads to our desire to see the other destroyed by any means necessary. 

Do you want to change the world? Find some friends you think are foolish, deceived, disgraceful, flat-out idiots, and love and enjoy them with your whole heart.

Again, we start killing our supposed enemies as soon as we stop calling our friends fools, for only through in-person, one-on-one relationships might we be able to see past our prejudice and bias to that beautiful person on the other side. Groups that seem to be the same from the outside have long killed each other over their slight disagreements (Catholic/Protestant, Blood/Crips, Sunni Shia, etc.) Yet individual people, even with the greatest of disagreements, often become close friends when they engage as individuals.

When in our relational ineptitude we fear the other to the point of excluding them from our lives, the next step is always the slippery slope of dehumanization. Our fear of the other insulates us from the vast truth that even those we most completely and vehemently disagree with would be our friends if we had the stones to engage with them. Our fear of the other isolates us from beautiful people and beautiful relationships that bring variety and the spice of life that every heart longs for. 

We must stop hating with the heart of the mainstream that wants us to fear, hate and wish bad things upon those that see the world in a different light. It is up to us to determine to love with our heart that wants the best for all people!

Go out of your way to have deep relationships with people who hold ideas that you believe to be most foolish. You need it. They need it. It is only in our differences that we find perspective. It is only in our disagreements that we are able to triangulate progress.

When our relationship with the other is from a great distance, we, humanity, have repeatedly shown our appetite for destruction.

But when we as an individual meet “the other” as an individual, we, humanity, have repeatedly shown our willingness to love, sacrifice, and even lay down our lives for “the other.”

Go.

Find the other. 

Meet the other. 

Befriend the other. 

Then call them fools. 

Hold Tension, Be Vast.

Remember, restoration alone brings victory.