Things that the Lord hates …

VIEWPOINT

By RALPH HARDIN

Evening Times Editor Y ou guys read the Bible Verse, right? I know you’ve seen it. In every paper (it’s right below this very column) we run a Bible Verse. Just the one, but it’s a little nugget of insight and maybe inspiration you can take with you.

Well, a little spoiler alert for today’s verse … as I was getting ready to put it on the page, I, like I always do, read over it. It’s a good one from the Book of Proverbs. It’s a list of “six things that the Lord hates,” and boy, is it a good list. I don’t want to give the whole thing away (although I’m not exactly sure what I’d say about “haughty eyes” anyway), so be sure to check it out after you read this. But I do want to address the sixth “thing” on the list. I don’t know if God intended these to be in order of least to most importance or if He hates them all equally, but the last item on the list is “one who sows discord among his brothers.”

That is the one that really caught my eye. You can see where this is going, right?

I hope so, because, brother, are we ever sowing seeds of discord. We’re planting acres and acres of discord and it’s a bumper crop these days. Now, before we get too far into it, let me say that I am a Christian. Yes, I’m actually one of those liberal, Democratic Christians that Tucker Carlson’s mom tells him doesn’t exist every night when she tucks him into bed, so I understand that I’m coming at this from a certain point of view.

And it’s an ever-shrinking point of view. For a supposedly “Christian nation,” there has never been a point in our history when fewer people have identified as such. The most recent (pre-coronavirus) statistics I could find showed that only around 37 percent of Americans regularly attend church. Yes, you can be a Christian but not attend church regularly, but you can’t build an accurate database of people who are “saved.” Well, the Lord can, but the U.S. Bureau on Statistics and Data doesn’t have those numbers.

So, maybe this is a lost cause. If less than 40 percent of Americans even care what the Bible says, then me using the Bible to make a point might be futile, but I’m willing to give it a shot. If the word is unfamiliar to you, “discord” is defined either as “disagreement between people” or “lack of harmony between sounds occurring together,” and you know what? Both work equally well here.

That’s all we do now. Don’t believe me? Strike up a conversation. I’d say do it face-to-face, but that’s a little harder to do nowadays. Just pull up any social media site or any page on the web that has a comments section. And it doesn’t even have to be some polarizing issue like politics, COVID-19, abortion or LGBTQ rights.

Here’s an example: There is a video on YouTube right now of an Indian lady with no arms who creates incredible works of art by holding her paintbrush with her feet. I feel like Spider-Man when I can reach down and pick up a dropped pencil with my toes, so I have no idea how this woman does this, but it’s pretty cool. One of her videos has over 280,000 views. It has over 3,800 “thumbs up” votes … and 84 “thumbs down” votes. Yes, you read that right. There were 84 people who not only, for whatever reason, did not like the video, they felt it was necessary to actually take the time to “down-vote” it. How pathetic are those people?

Well, those people walk among you. They are the ones who will find negativity anywhere. Yesterday, I saw a Facebook post from someone right here in Marion complaining about having to queue to enter Walmart and then suggesting to everyone that they, instead, go to Marion Market Place, adding, “I bet you can shop without a mask and no one will call you on it.” That was his pitch! You don’t have to wait a minute or two in an entry system designed to keep people safe and you can probably get away with violating the governor’s pandemic-related public health mandate.

What reason do these people have for instigating this discord? Why would you give a thumbs down to an armless artist? (probably something to do with the fact that she’s “Indian” or “female” or both) Why would you run down a retailer that has policies in place that are in line with the state’s health and safety guidelines? (danged ol’ gov’mint tellin’ us what to do!) At some point, all of this in-fighting and disunity will be our ultimate downfall.

Sowing discord among your fellow man … pretty fun, I guess.