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THE COAST NEWS
JULY 26, 2013
Important, but not always easy, to ‘love thy neighbor’ JOE MORIS Baby Boomer Peace In my last column I finished with the words: “Don’t store up treasures on Earth, for the real treasures are those that are stored up for heaven.” I was blessed to receive many, very kind responses where the most typical response was, “Thank you for reminding me of what is most important.” But of course I had that one critic who was bound and determined to demean my character and spirit. Nothing I could say or do in an attempt to appease him mattered. I likened it to an evil assault. Actually it was evil due to all the vile language used to demean my character. There was no counter to the points I raised by this critic, just childish nonsense packaged in four-letter words. There are treasures that cannot be measured by the “things” we own. Of course we all need a certain amount of earthly treasures in today’s society like a roof over our heads, food on our table and a means to get to work to make the money to avoid living under a bridge somewhere. But, one of the heavenly treasures that the universe wants us to learn is to respect the spirit that lives in each of us, even the spirit in our detractors. Our spirit, our soul, is the offspring of God and it means we have a direct link to our maker. No matter what religion you are, even being atheist
like my detractor, we all (well, most of us) have this inner compass that directs us to respect others. I happen to be Christian so I have come to understand that the entire New Testament boils down to two simple lessons: To love God with all your heart and soul and love your neighbor as yourself. Think about that a little. If everyone lived by those two lessons there would be no wars, there would be no greed and there would be a happy and harmonious world. John Lennon, in his oft unusual methods, penned the song “Imagine.” One of the lines in his prose finishes with “… and no religion too.” Religion may just be the best and the worst that humanity has had to struggle with. Each religion seems to think their God is their own and they are willing to kill or maim you in order to force their belief down your throat. Wars continue to be fought defending a God that just happens to fit inside the box that each religion has placed around God. Each religion seems to be a critic of the others. It is this festering negativity that sticks in the psyche that causes its followers to be taken away from the real truths of their religion where hatred and revenge can override the good and become the focus instead. It galls me every time a pastor of mine infers that Jews will not go to heaven because they haven't accepted Christ as their savior. To me that is just flat wrong because we are all His children. My daughter and I have penned a book on spirituality that will come out soon. We
already know that we are going to get a lot of grief from what we have written. We know we will be criticized without mercy by some and that the criticism will be difficult to accept. We will be tested when trying to “love our neighbor” while our character is being assassinated. But Christ was also quoted in books like “The Book of Thomas” and the “Book of Andrew” (both are Disciples who penned these books, which were overlooked by Constantine when he assemTURN TO BABY BOOMER ON B15
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