Do WHAT to mine enemies?

If you're a "good Christian," I'm sure you know the chapter and verse to which I refer, don't you? Take your pick even: Matthew 5:44, Luke 6:27 or 35. Funny! When I read any of these lines, I don't hear one iota of equivocation. And who was it that said these words, again?

In point of fact, no major religious tradition in the world does not hold this prescription as one of its tenets. The Buddha teaches: "Hatreds never cease through hatred . . . through love alone they cease. This is an eternal law" (Dhammapada 3-5). Confucius says: "He whose heart is in the smallest degree set upon Goodness will dislike no one" (Analects 4.3-4). The Tao Te Ching puts it: "I treat those who are good with goodness, and I also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus, goodness is attained" (49). The Qur'an: "The good and the evil are not alike. Repel the evil deed with the good. And, lo! The one between whom and you there was enmity would become as if a warm friend" (41.34). The Tosefta give us: "Aid an enemy before you aid a friend and you subdue hatred" (Baba Metzia 2.26). And the Ramayana advises: "A superior being does not render evil for evil . . . the ornament of virtuous persons is their conduct. One should never harm the wicked or the good or even criminals meriting death. A noble soul will ever exercise compassion even to one who enjoys injuring others and at the moment that the cruel person commits the vicious acts. For who is without fault?" (Yuddha Kanda 115).
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I Admit It! (#1)

Okay, OK! Yes, I am probably the world's worst "blogger." In fact, I've got to put the word in quotation marks because I'm not sure I can even dream of aspiring to the name. It's been six-and-a-half months since I last rattled the keys. Sheesh!

What's wrong with me? There haven't been things happening that I care to comment on? Like, oh! I don't know . . . the whole world sinking into DEEPression, the likes of which I suspect we ain't never seen before? Wall Street, the Bush Administration, Detroit, Iraq, Bernie Madoff, etc., etc. Talk about your STATES of sin! I could go on and on, but most of the rest of the world's already doing that.

Yes, I predict that the Great Depression isn't going to look so "great" when this one's passed, if that ever happens. If we've left one lump of coal, pint of petroleum or tankard-full of natural gas in the ground by the time we're done, I'll be shocked. We're spending our non-renewable sources of energy faster than the mega-banks spent their TARP funds! Do you get what the term "non-renewable" means? It means, folks, that when it's gone there ain't no more! The end! Kaput! Fini! What part of "the party's over" don't you understand?

Ferchrissakes, we're melting the polar ice caps and we take more than a decade to debate whether it can be scientifically proven that it's us doing it or some "natural phenomenon" we've never seen before. As if that makes one iota of difference! Humans haven't been around long enough in terms of geologic time to have seen anything yet. When we're all knee deep in neo-Devonian seas and our feet have begun to devolve into flippers, you think we'll wake up then? I doubt it. As long as our heads aren't underwater, we'll still be blathering on about whether evolution is purely theoretical and no more or less valid a system of ideas than Genesis.

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