Bigotry, the cancer of the soul

I heard this phrase on the news lately and it struck me as particularly profound. When one is obsessed with other people, what they are doing wrong, how bad they are, how to keep them "in their place", it is as if they are eaten up inside by a malignant growth.

The only things that will kill bigotry are love and enlightenment. One must have those two things working in accordance with one another to effectively kill the malignancy. For the people who are having to become enlightened though, it seems as frightening as chemotherapy. They have to decide that things they previously thought were bad, evil, sinful, wrong are not anymore and that can shake the foundations of almost everything they were taught. It's frightening to face up to being wrong. This is not an easy task to melt a frozen heart, to soften one hardened for so many years, to admit how one previously felt was wrong.

Bigotry ironically is not prejudiced in whom it infects. It infects all colors, sexes, races, religions, creeds, choices and lifestyles. You could meet bigots of every race, creed, sexual orientation and culture on earth if you walked around long enough and met enough people.

Bigotry's favorite tool is the "us vs them" mentality. I'm not one of them, I'm different, they are bad because of, the have made the choice to be gay, they have made the choice to be Muslim, they are out of a culture or race that they can't help but to be bad people.

There is more that humanity has in common then what makes up different. There is more that connects us then what tears us apart. We each have a choice we get to make, and not just once, but over and over again. Humanity is most inspiring when it realizes it was wrong and it changes. It always fights itself, it can never be totally free of it's cancer, but in the end it triumphs enough to give us continued hope that people will continue on the path of recognizing bigotry where it lay and not letting it hide behind a facade of religious rightness or morality or any other thing that justifies it's continued existence.

Bright Blessings