Daily Lesson for April 14, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from 1 John 2 verse 11:

"But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes."

We speak of "blind hatred" as if the categorical hatred of a particular race or religion or nation is separate in substance from our ordinary hatred of a particular individual.  But the truth of the matter is all hatred is blind hatred.

Hatred is black hole in our hearts robbing us of the light we need to see others as they really are in the light of God. When we hate we can no longer see the light in others. Their light gets swallowed in our darkness. We, of course, cannot see this.  We our blind in the way our hatred is taking us.   We cannot see how the darkness within us is really what makes others so dark in our perception.  We cannot see how it takes us to a place of dehumanization and demonization.  We cannot see how ultimately this leads us to a place of murder -- usually spiritual murder, but sometimes even physical.  We cannot see how this is the path to hostility, war and even genocide.  We kill to stop the darkness out there, but in fact the darkness is within us.

We all have the light of God within. Our brothers, sisters, neighbors, friends, and even our enemies have this light. Seeking to see this light is the spreading of the light within ourselves and the beginning of the end to the darkness in others.