Sunday, January 9, 2011

Murder

Have you ever noticed that somebody is always getting murdered? It seems like every time I turn on the tv or read the news online, somebody is getting murdered.

Parents gun down their children. Children gun down their parents. On any given day, somebody is getting shot, stabbed or strangled. It's kinda hard not to notice if you look around this place even just a little.

Right this second, on the 11 O'clock news, they're talking about a fatal supermarket shooting in Arizona. They're calling it a rampage.

This issue of murder was my most confusing issue when I first came to the Course. And it still confuses me. In the text, J says:

Assault can ultimately be made only on the body. There is little doubt that one body can assault another, and can even destroy it. Yet if destruction itself is impossible, anything that is destructible cannot be real. Its destruction, therefore, does not justify anger. To the extent to which you believe that it does, you are accepting false premises and teaching them to others. The message the crucifixion was intended to teach was that it is not necessary to perceive any form of assault in persecution, because you cannot be persecuted. If you respond with anger, you must be equating yourself with the destructible, and are therefore regarding yourself insanely.

MAD COURSE STUDENT: Good Lord, what is it for! And HELP!

3 comments:

  1. ‘The message of the crucifixion is perfectly clear: Teach only love, for that is what you are. If you interpret the crucifixion in any other way, you are using it as a weapon for assault rather than as the call for peace for which it was intended.’
    ~ A Course in Miracles

    What is for? Always for forgiveness. Simple but not easy. As the Course teaches, 'The dream is not being dreamed by somebody else.'

    From Your Immortal Reality:
    Every forgiving thought is an expression of love; every unforgiving thought is a murder. It doesn’t matter if there isn’t a corpse. Each day the earth turns is a day full of murders without corpses – people thinking unforgiving thoughts toward one another. As J says in no uncertain terms, ‘What is not love is murder. What is not loving must be an attack.’

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  2. I am still plodding along. Haven't finished ACIM nor read YIR but it seems to me that every murder is just the same as another crucifixion offering the same opportunities as the original. Are we not all the same children of God as J was? Seth

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  3. Wow, these are the best quotes and comments. And what you guys are saying is exactly true. I guess it really does comes down to a choice of what we are. Thanks ten million!

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