Why do some hate more than others? (B)
Why Some Hate (B)
Terry Dashner'pastor of Faith Fellowship Church in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.
It's entitled, The Complete Idiot's Guide to World Conflicts (Alpha 2002/Steven D. Strauss). It cost $18.95 at a Barnes and Nobles book store in April 2003. But, even at that price, it was a real bargain. Why? It has taught me the insanity behind world conflicts today. The fighting makes no sense at all; nevertheless, fighting continues unabated.
Let me begin by introducing some countries of the world that hate other countries particularly.
According to Steven Strauss, author of the book above, the whole world is at war. Says he, 'The world is a crazy place, and it seems to get crazier by the moment. If Islamic extremists aren't attacking the United States, then the Serbs are attacking Kosovo, the Palestinians and the Israelis are killing each other, or Protestants are blowing up Catholics. North Korea is digging what former President Clinton has called 'a big hole in the ground,' supposedly to hold nuclear weapons intended for use against their estranged brethren in the south.'
Strauss continues, 'A few years ago, Thailand made some economic mistakes that affected the entire Southeast Asian economy. The entire Pacific Rim was then jarred, and for a while, the whole world was on the verge of recession. The downturn in the Asian economy then caused an already hurting North Korea to become even more aggressive toward its rival South Korea.'
Because the world is connecting through trade, it is becoming smaller and inexorably linked in a chain whose links affect each other. In other words, ripple effects from one are bound to reach world wide no matter how small the country. This is 'cause and effect.' This is the power of a unified world market.
Today there are 192 countries on earth (2002 statistic) and in the past half century, almost every one of them has been involved in more than one conflict. Some have had many (ibid. page 5). Of course it might not surprise you that the U.S. has had the most conflicts in the past 50 years. Why? We've become everybody's big brother who guards over little brother to keep him from getting beat up by school-yard bullies. We have become the world's 'police officer,' for lack of a better term. If we look at the world's conflicts by region, it is the Middle East that wins the 'most conflicts' category for the 20th century (At the beginning of the 21st century, 43% of its countries were at war).
Why do we kill each other? The first great work of history, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, written in the fifth century B.C. E., is an analysis dedicated to discussing why men fight. Thucydides did not ask whether war was right or wrong. To him, war was a fact of life'men fight for survival. The author's message was that if one fights, one risks death; but the country that refuses to fight will undergo death as the penalty.
Then again the ancient Book of all books, the Bible, states something similar to Thucydides' philosophy when it says, 'There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven''(3:1) In verse eight of the same chapter it continues, ''A time for war and a time for peace' (Ecclesiastes 3:8b). There is no explanation why, only the fact stated as truth.
I'll close this document by quoting Mr. Strauss one more time. 'Democracy and capitalism are shared values, and, when combined with an ever-increasing interdependent economic system, it is rarely in the interest of one such country to harm another because the net result will be a diminution of both. As such, one of the best things that can be done to promote world peace is to promote capitalistic democracies. Far from being jingoistic, this is simply a conclusion drawn from the facts: Democracies don't go to war.'
See you tomorrow. In the mean time keep the faith, and stay the course. Jesus one day will right the wrongs. Pastor Tdash.
About the author: Pastors a church in Broken Arrow, OK.
