Hate is a horribly powerful thing.
It has a way of infiltrating the heart like a Cancer; polluting it, hardening it, darkening it, destroying it from the inside.
When someone submits to that hatred, when they are fully diseased with contempt for another they can do the most unspeakable, unimaginable things.
Extremism in a handful of like-minded people can alter the path of a nation. It can make them sell their souls and betray their brother with a kiss for a few pieces of silver.
And the truth is, you can’t fight the disease of extremism with more of the same.
You can’t simply respond to violent radicals with greater hatred, with more anger, with deeper darkness. That only serves to metastasize the terror and forces you to become a contagion. You end up contributing to the Cancer.
The only way radical extremism is overcome, the only way it is defeated—is through its most radical counterpoint.
Love is a subversive, scandalous, beautifully powerful thing.
It has always been the highest place we can aspire to.
It has always been the antidote to all the afflicts us.
It has always been the most dangerous weapon humanity has had or will ever have.
This kind of extremism confounds the terror-poisoned heart because it does what is counterintuitive to it.
It doesn’t respond in a way that makes sense.
It doesn’t fight the way the enemy wants.
It changes the whole dynamic of the war.
It makes up new rules of engagement.
When a person becomes radicalized by love, they can’t be broken by force, because they are no longer breakable. Wounding actually strengthens them because they have willingly chosen to feel, and the pain gives their heart space to expand its capacity for benevolence. They are stretched by the hatred they encounter, to find places of compassion that had been out of reach.
“But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” – Jesus
As a person of faith, the greatest response I can hope for in the face of the kind of viciousness on display in our nation, is to live the life of a radical extremist whose sole cause is Love. It may sound like a flowery cliché or an empty platitude, but to me it’s both a sacred calling and the deepest of gut checks. It’s what my faith is supposed to be made of. If I dare to call myself a Christian, it’s what I need to be made of.
Right now my country is riddled with people loudly claiming faith in a Jesus who would not be welcome in the very America they are making. And as much as this grieves me, the challenge is to still respond to them in a way that still resembles this Christ. God help me, this feels impossible.
Radical extremism is the essence of The Cross and the life of Jesus; a confounding, expectation-defying, hate-rattling decision to love defiantly in the face of violent intolerance. It’s the greatest thing a Christian can aspire to; not might or force or payback or revenge. It is in cultivating a heart which spends itself on behalf of the hurting, the forgotten, the silenced, the wounded in the most audacious manner, even to the point of its breaking.
And regardless of your faith perspective or religious tradition, compassion, generosity, goodness, and love are all the higher place to which we strain and stretch. And more than ever, they are the spot our eyes need to be trained upon as we climb.
Friend, these are days that demand a response. Hatred always does.
As you do, remember the power of radical extremism done in the name of Love.
More than anything, though—may you practice it.
