It's at times like these that I learn that violence begets violence, and darkness begets darkness.
Let me be clear right now before what I say what I'm about to say. I'm not talking about any minority groups or any cultures or countries or anything. I'm talking, very specifically, about white Christian nationalists in the west.
With that said, you know--it's terrible, how darkness rots one from the inside out. How it spreads and eats away at people like rust on an old car left run down in the rain. I see all the time, these kinds of people--the ones who are constantly shouting about making America a great Christian nation, who say that the LGBTQIA+ "pedofiles" and "groomers" need to be kept away from kids (all while they protect their rapist pastors and teach their girls that their body is not their own). "What if we got rid of them?" So says these people.
What if?
And I see those same people say that the rise of, or even the simple existence of, other religions in their neighborhood is the work of Satan, and that even the yoga studio down the street is really the den of demons. "What if we showed them all the light of Christ," they say, painting cardboard signs with crude images of hellfire and eternal torture.
What if?
Then I see these people say all these immigrants need to be thrown out despite centuries of stealing the land they stand on or setting up colonies far away. "What if we rounded them up and sent them back to where they came from?" So they say, and so we cringe, unsure of how people could be this way.
Because what if?
But when it keeps going, keeps going, and when they gut the land's abortion laws to "save the children" (while looking the other way when they ask for a free lunch about to he tossed in the school trash), when they look at Israel and Palestine and start seething about how all these terrorist-to-be children need to be wiped out...
I can't help but think, "what if we wiped you out instead?"
What if?
What if the doomsday you've been prepping for, you pure, noble, God fearing Christians, what if that glorious Rapture of yours... well, what if it isn't led by a red-faced, goat-footed, spiral-horned enemy, but the mothers trying to shelter their queer children from your conversion-tration camps? What if the proponents of Project 2025 find no harm coming to Jewish people in what they call "synagogues of Satan," nor the Muslims' masjids made a mess, but their own churches shut down, and their flocks scattered in the wind, or worse--they find a sheep staring at them, silent, with seven eyes and seven horns on its head, ready to charge back at every bad shepherd? What if you all seek Jesus in your last days, desperately looking to the skies, only to face the ones grabbing you by the scruff of your neck and see Him there, among them--Jesus, in a keffiyeh, and wearing a little Palestinian pin?
What if?
And then I sit quietly with God. I ask forgiveness. I seek fortitude. Because I don't want to have thoughts like these. I don't want anyone to be erased.
Then I sit longer in the quiet with Him. And I sigh a long, deep, aching sigh. Because I look around with my eyes open, you know--more effective that way--and I see that I don't think what I want will matter if this keeps on. If we all don't learn, together.
Hate is the seed bed of hell. Darkness fertilizers and nourishes darkness. Violence sheds blood that waters violets heralding a new era.
And then comes the seed itself from those flowers: that little "what if?"
What if? What if? What if?
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