At the request of a fellow writer, I’ve been trying to come up with a topic for his newsletter, a topic that’s of interest to writers. While pondering this, as I go about daily responsibilities in an increasingly violent world, the faint and insistent hammering from one of the many storage rooms in my brain finally got my attention.
What is it that writers are interested in? To misquote Charles Dickens, it is humanity that should be a writer’s business, and therefore of interest to each writer. For myself, I write to examine the society we live in, always preferring to write about the better sides of people. We are not two-dimensional, after all. I don’t like stories that don’t have happy endings, yet have written some myself that leave the conclusion to the reader’s imagination. Overall, I prefer to uplift people, not deepen their sorrows.
Yet efforts to write uplifting stories are too often blasted away by the daily horrors on the news. Always there is something barbaric going on, as humanity regresses further and further. It has long since been said that an eye for an eye will soon leave the entire world blind. And it is true. It is also true that we cannot ignore criminal actions: To do so encourages more of the same. We cannot allow cowardly, infiltrating terrorists to take over our lives and our countries.
Even so, to see innocent, sobbing, bandaged children with half of their faces blown away by indiscriminate bombing, tears apart every woman’s heart. There is never a valid reason to overreact and attack the innocent. It is men on all sides who start wars, and it is men on all sides who must listen to women and stop the violence now. We are sick and tired of shoveling up behind you. We are devastated by the cruelty you inflict on us and upon our children. We are heartsick at the maimed bodies and ruined lives. And like Nero, world leaders smirk and fiddle, their followers rape and pillage, while Rome burns and millions of innocent people suffer horribly before dying. Wake up and see what you are doing for what it is – carnage.
The world as a whole needs to turn away from the chains with which Satan has people bound. Change your attitudes and your actions! Change them now, before it is too late, before there is no world left for any of us, let alone future generations! Regardless of what the warped sectors of your cultures teach you, there is no honor in what you are doing. Wanton killing will not provide you entrance into your perception of the afterlife, however it is named. What you are doing is madness! Nations are permitted, even expected, to defend themselves. We are all immensely proud of our servicemen and women who perform that thankless task in the armed forces. However, nations do not have the right to go on the offensive, to take one hundred lives in place of a single one lost. Blood lust feeds upon itself and just keeps growing.
Simple retribution is the basic law of the universe: For every action, there is a reaction. We bring that upon ourselves with every decision we make, especially when we seek the downfall of others. Vengeance, on the other hand, belongs to God alone.