WILL LOVE CONQUER ALL?

 

 

 

What we believe can kill us, or it can nurture us. If I believe that my wife is having an affair with the neighbor, this belief will severely affect me. However, if I believe that I can completely trust her, this will have the opposite effect.

 The same principle applies to what we believe about our fellow human beings. I had been supervising a unit of probation officers who only received sex abuse cases. Therefore, I was required to attend a training session. One intervention sounded particularly promising. Abused women would address sex offenders in prison about how being raped had devastated them.

 Certainly, this would sensitize these offenders to the horrors of what they had done, right? However, it was later found that a significant number had been encouraged by their victims suffering to seek the pleasure of raping again.

 This finding highlights the need to understand those we are supervising and even the one we intend to marry. It also should cause us to question, “ Love conquers all.” This adage takes many forms—“They need therapy not punishment,” or , “Kindness has the power to change the world,” or, “All you need is love.”

 No wonder the recent movement to defund the police! If love conquers all, then we need more lovers not punishers. Instead, if some are incurably attracted to evil, perhaps police are necessary, and perhaps without them, evil becomes even more alluring.

 Perhaps also we cannot lump everyone into this narrow adage, “Love conquers all.” Clearly, some indulge their evil tendencies while others restrain them.

 While it might be hard for the idealist to acknowledge this, evil is so deeply entrenched in many to the point that they are irredeemable, apart from a miraculous Hand from above.

 My years at probation and parole taught me many illuminating lessons about humanity. Those offenders, who I had trusted, most often turned out to be the most dangerous and manipulative. Some were so cunning that they were even able to deceive the police and the judges. One, who I had arrested and visited at the police jail, was even able to take it over. One day I even found him sitting in the chief’s swivel chair. He had the office to himself, where he was pursuing his crimes non-stop from his lofty perch. The police would even grant him leave to see his girlfriend. Without her permission, he began taking photographs of her in the nude, which he planned to sell. She had heard the stories about her “beloved,” but she refused to believe them.

 We are easily deceived, especially as our feelings and faulty worldview prevent us from seeing.

Why are many Jews Leftist, Pro-Hamas, and Anti-Israel?

 

 

Many are asking this question. Some associate it with the Stockholm Syndrome. The Jews fear another Holocaust. Therefore, they feel that their best bet is to identify with those who wish to do them harm.

 

I think that there is a better explanation. One highly educated Jewish woman had unduly been criticizing Israel. I countered by saying, “But the Muslim nations are far worse in every respect!”

 

Her response was illuminating—"I expect more from Israel.” I responded that she had an unfair double standard.

 

Actually, I think I understood her biased response. Israel had failed to live up to her inflated Leftist ideals and Jewish pride. Therefore, she would punish Israel for its failure to support her unrealistic expectations. But what could she expect from a nation fighting for its existence even prior to the UN vote to partition the land into both a Jewish and a Palestinian state!

 

But why her blinding pride? Sadly my Jewish people have rejected their God despite all His benefits—establishing the Jewish State for the third time, an historical anomaly, and enabling them to be successful wherever they have gone. However, their God had also warned them about taking credit for all their benefits:

·       Deuteronomy 8:17–20 “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day. And if you forget the LORD your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I solemnly warn you today that you shall surely perish. Like the nations that the LORD makes to perish before you, so shall you perish, because you would not obey the voice of the LORD your God.”

 

Once Israel had rejected their God, they had to fill the vacuum with other gods, which they found more appealing and which would offer them an alternative sense of righteousness, a self-righteousness attained by championing any one of several Leftist causes and the “oppressed” even if they were more oppressive than others. After all, they had merely become oppressors because of their oppressed circumstances, right?

 

I am convinced that more carnage has been caused by such idealists seeking to establish their significance than all the common criminals. The late poet T.S. Elliot observed:

 

·       Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves. 

 

Idealism and the pursuit of feeling important can prove costly even when the idealist is seeking to do good. The noted Christian apologist, C.S. Lewis, recognized the threat of idealism when untamed by wisdom and humility:

 

·       Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

 

Another compassionate Jewish woman told me that she favored a two-state solution. I responded that this could never solve the problems:

1.     It has already been tried and failed.

2.     Muslims do not want a two-state solution. Instead, they have made their intentions clear to destroy the Jewish homeland and to murder the Jews. Why give them a foothold to accomplish their dreams!

 

She admitted the problems but confessed, “There must be some way forward. I have to hope in something.” This was my opportunity to turn her attention back to the God who had often saved Israel from hopelessness. However, she had to leave.