Lets work at this together, neighbor!

Chemical weapons are used in Syria and kills hundreds if not thousands. We are all tired of the rhetoric surrounding warfare along with its death and destruction.

We have heard this before. An atrocity occurs. The perpetrator denies it. The other camp tries to expose the truth and get the perpetrator to accept responsibility.

It goes like this. The Bart Simpson defense is called into play: ‘I Didn’t Do It, Nobody Saw Me Do It, There’s No Way You Can Prove Anything.’ This is the type of defense we all make when we want to reserve the option to do the same thing ourselves.

The other side rejoinders with a statement of the obvious: ‘You are the only one who has a giant cookie jar filled with this venom of warfare. Your hand is also stuck in the jar’. The Bart Simpson Defense is echoed loudly in the media until someone is eventually punished. There is some minor satisfaction until it happens again. Some place. Some where. The scenario repeats itself ad infinitum. We are tired of this. We know the routine.

History has shown there are three key ingredients needed to attain community and peace and end warfare, hatred and destruction.

These ingredients are categorized by the three key concepts of God, self, neighbor. They are brought together in an old saying: ‘Love God with all your heart, soul and mind and your neighbor as yourself.’ All three are needed – equal, integrated, balanced – to put an end to the destruction we all abhor. This is true locally as it is globally.

This is not my idea. It is well documented truth. A historical book documents a society that determined to bring security and peace to its land where chaos and injustice ruled. The plan was based on the concept of loving God, self and neighbor. Well neighbor that is, if they pertained to the correct family and clan. The plan was to eliminate them if they didn’t fit the tight categories.

The long and short of the history is that the society in the historical account began in chaos and ended in chaos. God shrank in stature too. So did the people. As the conclusion states, ‘Everyone did what he saw fit’. Anarchy ultimately reigned. The Historian made a strong point. Make the neighbor expendable and you make yourself expendable. After all, you and I are neighbor to somebody else. You cannot end warfare, bring peace and justice unless the love of God, self, and neighbor are equally integrated.

This raises many problems in our modern world. Many think that the world would be a better place without the concept of God. God is superfluous. But the concept of God enables us to think way beyond ourselves and to include all about us. God is not a superfluous thought. It is integral to our ability to include and respect each other. The tension however is that many who believe in the concept of God do so at the detriment of neighbor who may have a different sway on the concept of God. God, self, neighbor all equals, remember?

The concept of neighbor is also threatened. Modern social media for example, has made it possible to interact with neighbor without a personal relationship. Try a Facebook connection. We don’t need to talk or relate with the neighbor next door. The high technology connection is both immediate and distant. Who needs the interpersonal relationship? Unless of course we want to develop a friendship. And a meaningful friendship requires a balance between God, self and neighbor. All equally important.

In exasperation we determine to just do what is right. But try this without integrating God and neighbor and I end up selfish, greedy and ultimately unhappy.

Syria is a dismal situation where the concepts of God, self and neighbor are lost in a mist of despair. The sadder part is that this could be any place in the world. It becomes any place in the world when everybody does what s/he thinks is right. It could be your city. Your home. Your clan. Your family. Actually it probably is.

Learning how to become better at loving God, self and neighbor transforms not only ourselves but eventually the world. Lets work at this together, neighbor!