Love Erases Hate

MY dad had a family campaign to make us all more alert that hating is no more necessary than it is acceptable. He had been reading this statement of Mary Baker Eddy's in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: ``Human hate has no legitimate mandate and no kingdom. Love is enthroned." Whenever he heard any of us saying ``I hate . . . ," he would question by asking one word, ``Hate?" Within three days we stopped using the word hate. And it seems to me that our attitudes toward the things we had form erly ``hated also improved!

Hate isn't a power. It is a self-inflicted wound that is eliminated by turning to God's unfailing love. Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, points out in Science and Health, ``The way to extract error from mortal mind is to pour in truth through flood-tides of Love.

A schoolteacher I know had felt that some students were expressing a great deal of resentment because they were unhappy with being bused. She prayed to see how she could help to resolve the difficulty.

Not long afterward, the teacher noticed a group of parents waiting at the bus stop after a parent-teacher meeting. She offered the five parents a ride, which they gladly accepted, and a lively conversation filled the car. The next day in the classroom the atmosphere was completely different. Those were the parents of the students in her class who had been upset. That one small act of kindness erased the atmosphere of hate.

Later, hearing a neighbor wonder when we would stop noticing the color of skin any more than we note the color of a person's eyes, the teacher was alerted to the continuing need to quit seeing any student as a material person and do a better job of appreciating the Godlike qualities each child expresses. For example, one child in the class often left his seat to dance around it. The teacher realized that in this case, instead of correcting the child, she needed to correct the dislike in her own thought. The idea came: Love him; he is expressing his happiness and joy in what we are doing. She did this, and the interruptions soon stopped.

In the garden of Gethsemane, Christ Jesus faced two men who expressed a great deal of hate. Judas, one of Christ Jesus' disciples, betrayed him with a kiss that told the soldiers who Jesus was. Was Jesus filled with hate? No. In fact, Jesus was so filled with love (not hate) that when another disciple misguidedly attacked those arresting Jesus--cutting off one servant's ear--Jesus was able to heal the injured man.

As Abraham said to Lot in the Bible, ``Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdmen and thy herdmen; for we be brethren." The love that comes from understanding that we are all ``brethren," children of the one Father, God, also brought healing to two American soldiers who entered Tokyo right after the Second World War. They were so upset with the conditions they saw there that they became ill. They asked a Japanese Christian Scientist who had survived the bombings in J apan to pray for them. They were instantaneously healed. This woman's love for God and man and her trust of God's unchanging, reliable, divine Love enabled her to heal these two soldiers.

A hymn in the Christian Science Hymnal urges:

Teach us to love each other, Lord,

As we are loved by Thee;

None who are truly born of God

Can live in enmity.

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