“Here’s what we know about life. I have all kinds of natural feelings in my life and it doesn’t necessarily mean that I should act on every feeling. Sometimes I get angry and I feel like punching a guy in the nose. It doesn’t mean I act on it. Sometimes I feel attracted to women who are not my wife. I don’t act on it. Just because I have a feeling doesn’t make it right. Not everything natural is good for me. Arsenic is natural.” –Rick Warren

Hate is natural.   Prejudice is natural.   Who to hate is learned, but the capacity to hate is there, deep in the ancient pit within the human consciousness.   We all carry the history of millions of years of life on earth within us every moment of our day.   Tribalism is natural to us.   To be afraid of the alien other, and to hate them, is natural to us.   Blind obedience to the alpha leader is natural to us.   The unthinking, bloodthirsty mob is in our blood.   But so is love, so is kindness to the stranger, so is curiosity, and the yearning for truth and meaning.   We are, by nature, civilization destroyers, but also civilization builders.   The mindless beast is within us all.   The good person is the one who will not unleash it within themselves, or in others.     Do you want to be that good person Rick, or do you want to feed the beast?   Every moment of your day Rick, it’s one or the other.

You’re right Rick.   Just because you have feelings that does not make them right.   What makes them right, or makes them profoundly evil, is how your feelings translate into acts.   Do you help your neighbor in this life, or do you let the beast eat them?   Who is your neighbor Rick?