Instead of tariffs, I’m going to talk about tolerance. Instead of fighting, about forgiveness. And instead of arms, accountability.
Yesterday was a rare day in that it was the final day of Passover, which some consider the holiest holiday of Judaism, and marks the liberation of Jews from slavery. It was also Easter, the highest Christian holy day, which commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ and salvation through His victory over death.
These holidays almost always overlap, but rarely with the final day of Passover on Easter. I’m not about to preach to you or quote scripture, just make some points no matter what you believe or don’t believe.
Upon Jesus’s death, Christianity spread to 2% of the Roman Empire within 250 years, and 10% within 300 years. By 350 AD it represented over half that population, about 30 million Christians (out of 400 million people in the entire world). This is because of three major facts:
• The Jews believed that the Messiah was still to come, but the Christians believed He had come and risen again. Call it “immediate gratification,” but that’s the theological aspect.
• But more importantly, anywhere in that world (and our current one) that you attend church, the Christian Mass is the same, simply differing in native language and local custom (conch shells instead of bells, for example). Pagan customs were extremely different from community to community.
• Yet most importantly, Christian communities took care of each other. For the first time, in awful conditions and low life spans, the community took care of the sick, the orphaned, the widows, the destitute. This quickly drew adherents.
In our secular world, the notions, and pursuit of, community, tolerance, forgiveness, and accountability are extraordinarily important and too often absent. There’s a reason that religions of various sorts have been with us for millennia. They are to provide a “handhold” to keep us from falling off the cliff we try so precipitously to climb. We are in a universe of mystery, but on a planet of continuing conflict. Religion, and ideals such as tolerance and forgiveness, don’t exist only within, and stop at the walls of, some edifice called a “church.”
They need to exist in our hearts. Otherwise, the mystery of the future will be of beings arriving at our planet, seeing some evidence of past life, and wondering what the hell happened to us and where we all went….

The highest result of education is tolerance. —Helen Keller
We have tolerance, respect, and equality in our written laws but not in the hearts of some of our people. —Ruby Bridges
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. —Mahatma Gandhi
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you. —Lewis B. Smedes