ANGER CONVULSES IRAQ. The black headline screamed across Friday’s /San/ /Antonio Express News/. For two years we have witnessed a nation in turmoil. Good things have happened in the country. Electricity has been restored, schools are open, women are experiencing a sense of freedom they have never before known. Side-by-side has been on-going violence that has daily taken lives in large number, both Iraqi and American. Men, women, and children turn themselves into human torpedoes and go out looking for crowded places to detonate themselves and bring death and injury to the innocent.

This is not a new phenomenon. It has been estimated that as many as 170,000,000 human beings died as a result of brother killing brother in the 20th century. After all, that is the way it began with Cain taking the life of his brother Abel, due to jealous over Abel’s favor with God because of a righteous offering. The Holocaust immediately comes to mind. Six million Jews died in German concentration camps, “Arbeit Macht Frei” – Labor makes us free – reads the black metal sign above the entrance to Dachau. As terrible as the Holocaust was it accounted for less than four hundredths of the number who died in that century. Other places and other names such as: 1904 NAMIBIA, 1915 ARMENIA, 1932 UKRAINE, the HOLOCAUST, 1975 CAMBODIA, 1982 GUATEMALA, 1994 RWANDA, 1995 BOSNIA … and the list goes on.

In our own country we live with genocide. We call it murder. In New York City alone there will be more people killed on the street this year than the total number of American soldiers who have been killed n the fighting in Iraq since the beginning of that war.

As I have grown older and become more of a student of both history and people I have concluded that violence and hatred are so ingrained in the very nature of man that noting short of a miracle of God can bring an end to it all. I have already noted the first murder. Jealousy and hatred were the motive then and when all else is cut away that remains the primary cause of genocide. All too often it is done in the name of deity.

Most of will never understand hatred and misguided theology that would motivate a group of men to fly airplanes on kamikaze missions into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Just as hard to understand are those already mentioned who strap explosives on their bodies. Most will never understand why anyone would have no mercy, no compassion and no love for others. Jesus said we are to love our enemies, to do good to those who do evil. This is difficult to do. Man would say it is an impossible concept. It is if we choose to hate. Genocide will end when men decide to love. That may never happen but it is possible. God gave us the freedom to choose. The Christian word for “love” is a word of choice, not a word of emotion. It says I will never hurt you; I will never leave you or forsake you. Instead, I will choose to love you and hold you up. Nothing you can do will ever make me stop loving you. Compassion will replace violence only when we learn to love one another.