Human Bombs

I read this morning a short piece written by Erwin McManus in his book "Soul Cravings." His topic is "The Danger of Loving Nothing." In it he writes, "We live in a time when the most terrifying bomb is not a nuclear one, but a human one. This is where humanity has come. This is how far we've evolved. We strap bombs around our chests, lure innocents into our presence, and then consider ourselves heroes as we destroy everything around us. If this were not bad enough, for some it has become proof of spirituality.
There are people around us waiting to E X P L O D E! How many of us are walking around with fuses already lit? With the danger of oversimplifying, you are a danger to the wrold when you love nothing, and you are even more dangerous when you love the wrong things. When there is a vaccum of love within your soul, hate, bitterness, envy, and racism rush in to fill the empty space."

I watch TV news and read the newspaper and what do I see? Almost everyday I learn of another human being whose fuse is lit or a human being who has exploded. We live in a short fuse culture. If people don't get their way then they believe the only recourse they have is violence. If people see a threat, whether it exists or not, the only recourse is to act against the threat. Our government passes many laws out of fear, we fear so much in this country and our shoot first ask questions later mentality has cost America the lives of many wonderful men and women. I see it in the apathy of people in our own community who seem content to allow violence to be a way of life in certain neighborhoods as long as it doesn't spill over into my neighborhood. We have lost our love for what it means to be human when the loss of life doesn't affect us anymore.

I have been affected by this as well. How many stories of rape and murder have I heard in my lifetime or even in the past year? Hearing about it so much desensitizes me to the pain and anguish this violence causes and how it impacts our whole community. If I lose the ability to care, then my fuse may be just as short as the next guy's and I may become as big a threat as any other. Or possibly, my biggest threat is not that I may become violent but that I become apathetic to the violence in my world.