We’ve learned absolutely nothing. And we’re growing stupider.

Forgetting our history, we’re making the same mistakes we’ve been making for decades–no, for thousands of years.

We repackage every old injustice and sell it as something new.  Every rising generation decides it’ll be the one to end it, but they use the same flawed techniques of arrogance and force, creating even a bigger problem that the next rising generation is sure they can resolve by using the same flawed techniques themselves.

We’re only recycling old hostilities, the same old selfishness, the same “us-versus-them” mentality that caused Cain to kill Abel, that made the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Nazis, ISIS and even us rage war against those we think are “wrong.”

We try to force them to believe our point of view, but when EVER in the history of the entire world has that EVER WORKED?

That’s what I thought.

Here’s the secret to real peace: We each give up our own selfishness first. Until we are right with ourselves and right before God, nothing else will ever work. You’ll notice the most aggressive people are also the most personally bitter.

Once we fix ourselves, the rest of the world will follow suit.

“I’ll force it! I can force the world to see reason like you forced me—”

We forced you to see reason?

“Yes!”

Obviously it didn’t work, did it?  It seems that forcing someone to accept your position only forces them to find new ways around it.

~Book 7, The Soldier in the Middle of the World, coming October 2017