Do you ever wonder why there’s so much intolerance, prejudice, bigotry, and hate in the world? Well, I do. In fact, I wonder about it quite often; and I don’t know why on earth we humans can’t do a better job of getting along with one another. And why can’t we accept one another for what we are? Why can’t we judge one another based not upon outside appearances, which really do not count for anything, but based solely upon what’s on the inside. After all, aren’t people’s internal qualities the only ones that really matter in the long run? Things like: How decent they are; how compassionate they are; how they treat others, not only other humans but also all living beings; and whether or not they try to live productive lives, even if those lives are different from the lives we have chosen for ourselves.

I get so tired of reading in the paper or hearing on the news about how some person, somewhere, committed a hate crime against another person simply because he or she did not like the color of that person’s skin, approve of how that person chose to live, accept who that person chose to love, condone what that person chose to believe—or disbelieve, for that matter—and a thousand other totally absurd reasons. The list is, after all, endless; and the reality is that someone is always going around hating someone else based upon grounds that, as my daddy would say, “Don’t amount to a hill of beans.”

We humans have so much potential for good. We also have so much potential for evil. But based upon what I read in the paper and hear on the news, it seems like a great many people have decided to let evil win. And I find it especially sad that so many of these people are going around hating others yet, all the while, claiming to be Christians. Personally, I have to wonder how they justify their hatred? It certainly can’t be through the Word of God, at least not that with which I am familiar. Not that I am an especially devote Christian, at least not if you’re counting things like going to church (I haven’t been in years) or reading the Bible on a daily basis; but I did grow up attending church, going to Sunday School, and reading the Bible; and believe it or not, but I do recall a good bit of what I learned, even now, these many years later.

One particular passage that stayed with me and which I can quote verbatim is this one from I Corinthians 13: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing.”  I am nothing. That says it all.

Love. It’s such a little word, only four letters, but that word is gargantuan in meaning. The problem, however, is that so many people just can’t seem to understand its definition. If they did, this world would be a far better place, for it would be a world without intolerance, prejudice, bigotry, and hate. It would, instead, be a world filled with love.