Dangerously Misplaced Passion

Humans are hardwired to be passionate. We are also culturally encouraged to demonstrate our passions, mocking people who show none as being mechanical or having no soul. Another word often paired with “passion” is “love.” We swoon over “passionate love affairs.” In fact, a partner who fails to act passionately is often accused of being unable to fully feel and express love. This is a very convenient button to push.

Passion isn’t always linked with love. Another face of passion is rage. Part of the human maturation process is learning when and how to respond to feelings of rage, both from the defensive and offensive sides. Youth is brimming with both faces of passion, too often not taking the time or care to apply reason, logic, or facts to the feelings before allowing them to explode. There is a reason that passionately jealous lovers are usually young and suicide bombers are rarely old people.

I don’t believe that passion fades with age. Love and outrage are still felt, but the respondent actions are tempered with a deeper and broader understanding of whatever the situation is and what the repercussions might be. At some point, we learn, often the hard way, that we can be misled by our overwhelming feelings. Once you have struck out at someone in the name of passion and you later discover you did so in error, or you were misled to believe a lie, the damage is lasting. Honest contrition can be expressed, but the action cannot be undone, and prayers for forgiveness are not always granted by our fellow humans.

I had a friend once whose wife betrayed him and publicly taunted him with it, later to deeply and lovingly regret it. When she begged for forgiveness, his answer was honest, “I can forgive you, but I can never forget.”

Grace was illustrated by a very famous man who once prayed, “Forgive them for they know not what they do.”

We are all being played, now. Back up and look at the ongoings on our campuses, in our streets, our houses of law, and on the global stage. What we are experiencing is not a political gambit. It is not Republican against Democrat. It is not nation versus nation. This is a full-on spiritual war against humanity’s most basic principles and morals that laid the groundwork for mankind to flourish and advance.

Humans have never been able to achieve, much less maintain perfection, either personally or civically. But we’ve been able to celebrate each incremental step of improvement we’ve made. To condemn the human spirit by claiming those efforts are null and void because they are not yet complete is like eating away the mortar between the bricks of civilization, tearing at the foundation even while construction of the upper stories continues.

Just tear down the whole thing, why don’t you!? Take us back to the dark ages where the strongest, most hate-filled leader with the sharpest sword and most powerful arm has the power to rule us all by slicing and beating us into total submission. That is the ultimate goal of the jihadists. This is spiritual warfare, the struggle of good versus evil, preying primarily on the untempered passions and unfinished education of youth to overwhelm the older, war-weary generations.

You don’t even need to be of the Judeo-Christian faith to recognize this. But you do need to understand history to put it in perspective. Take a look at ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Each collapsed from within, offering a textbook template of how to achieve it again. The Bible is all about wars, oppression, slavery, and redemption. For me, it was always easier to view that compilation of stories as teaching allegories. But, archeology is proving the writings to be actual historical accounts as cities and supportive artifacts are being discovered, dug up, and studied.

You don’t have to believe it. I don’t want to believe it. But it’s looking to me that we are in the early days of Armageddon, a struggle not limited to the Valley of Megiddo, but spread throughout the world, involving peoples of every nation, eroding whatever progress we have made over the ages. And we haven’t gotten here by accident. This has been following a decades-old plan to infiltrate and incrementally redirect society.

Don’t just think about it. Study it! Do you really want to support global Sharia law? How’s that going to make life better for you? For your children? For humankind in general? Will that guarantee peace? Oh, there is so much more to this struggle than immediately meets the eye. This is a nightmare and it’s time to wake up!

Just my unread, uneducated, youthful opinion.