I was behind a car with the Coexist bumper sticker, you know, where every letter is a religious symbol? Yesterday as I sat there, I realized that it's not saying that we should all change and become a Giant Cult.
The sticker is saying we should be peaceful.
There is a push for peace out there. I think there always has been, but why hasn't it happened?
In order to truly live and coexist with your neighbor in peace, you have to be willing to do two things: Love, and Forgive.
Now, first of all, when I say love I do not mean that you are bubbling over with affection and care, I mean that you have to not hate them with a passion.
This takes Like, Teamwork, and Cooperation.
Liking someone means you have to put aside your differences, find common ground, work as a Team, and Cooperate when necessary. If you put this in the perspective of a community, there is no gate, but there is a Housing Authority and it's rule is: whatever your neighbor does, accept it, forgive them, and help them if they allow you to.
It begins by understanding that not all people are out there to hate you.
It begins by knowing that people of other religions are mostly peaceful. Just because they worship a different God doesn't make them evil.
Religion is a big part of being healthy, because it makes you think outside of yourself. No matter what God you pray to, you open up to something bigger; you hope, you thank, you count your blessings; and then you begin to think about your family, your loved ones, the problem with your neighbors; and then you think about what you can do to fix that problem, and maybe the solution is for you to stop hating them.
They need to make a Coexist bumper sticker with people of different skin tones and nationalities using their bodies to make the letters, because racism is still epicly abundant.
You can't love others, in a general, you-would-serve-the-homeless-soup kind of way, if you are afraid of someone because they have skin of a different color.
Or if they are lesbian, gay, or transgender.
I am supposed to love everyone. We are supposed to leave the judgment for Judgement Day. I don't truly know what is in someone's heart until they tell me, and to do that, I'd have to have a relationship with them that includes opening up, sharing, and trust. Faces, attire, hairdos can all hide the true feelings inside a person and show the world only what the person wants you to see. I can dress up fancy to feel fancy, but inside, I may hold hurts, hate, and fear.
The way to accept others is to get to know others and begin to see them as PEOPLE instead of as a stereotype. It's easy to love an imperfect person with feelings and things in common with other people. It's hard to love a religion, a color, or a lifestyle. Those are inanimate things.
Shift your thinking.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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