Do you like parables?  I do.  They help us to look at large situations and make them more familiar.  More bite-sized.  Americans such as myself like bite-sized things.I often worry about things happening to my family, to my friends, to good people in general.  I realized in my thirties that just worrying about things doesn't really help much.  If you really want to prevent bad things from happening you have to think ahead.  You have to think about how you would react in horrible situations.  Perhaps it’s better to say: How you wish you would react in horrible situations.

The sad truth is that many of us just freeze in fear when something bad happens in front of us.  We are stunned, our mind freezes, and we hope that someone nearby is courageous, strong and able to take control of the situation.  This doesn’t often happen in life.

Let's get started with the parable.

I’d like you to imagine that you are walking down the street with a close brother of yours, and you are surprised to see him suddenly get attacked in front of you.  He is dragged down to the ground, and he is pummeled in front of you while you look on in shock and horror.  He pleads out to you for help as his face is bloodied, his teeth broken, and his words become slurred from the onslaught.  He fights back, but is overwhelmed by the power of the assailant.

What would you do?  Do you watch your family member continue to be driven into the ground, or do you help him?

I doubt many of us would say we would just watch this event occur in front of us.  The vast majority of us will say that we would throw ourselves into that fight before our brother could receive such damage, and such pain.  We would defend him and defeat this enemy together.

Let’s imagine that for some reason we don’t do that.  For some reason we are intimidated by the situation, by the enemy, and we decide not to help our brother.  We just stand there as he is driven into the ground.  His arms eventually weaken and fall to his side, his eyes roll back and fade to white, his screams soften and become a shallow gurgle as the blood fills his mouth.  

He dies in front of us.  But at least we are safe.

By doing this, by staying out of the battle we give ourselves a chance at surviving another day.  But do we really?

How alive will we feel knowing that we could have helped our brother survive when we did nothing?  How will we be able to look at ourselves in the mirror again without seeing a coward?  How will we be able to look at our family, our friends, our country, knowing that we are incapable of protecting one of them?  

It will not be possible.

We will spend the rest of our lives regretting that moment.  That point in time when we could have done something.  That chance that we had at becoming a savior, but instead chose to become a bystander.  That moment when we saw the final flicker of life fade out in our brother's eyes as we stood watching.

We will toil and thrash in our minds from that point forward, full of hatred for ourselves and incapable of loving those around us, as the torment fills us up over years and decades, until we collapse into ourselves like a dying star, alone and exhausted, welcoming the relief that death will finally provide.

But until the day of that merciful finale we will wish with every moment of our remaining life that we could go back to that point in time and change our actions.  That we could return there in that climactic moment when our brother needed us, and throw ourselves into that fight with the rage of a million homeland warriors, a million mothers and a million fathers, without worry of self, without fear of consequence.  Because in our final moments we will finally realize that there is no value in just being alive, there is only value in being alive with those we love, and those who love us.  And any that wish to destroy that must be attacked from all sides, all directions and by all means.  They must be driven into the ground until they become one with the earth.

There can be no bystanders, there can be none that look away.  The enemy of our family must know that we will all attack together.  They must know that we value no life without each other.  Only then will they understand that the greatest force in this life is not hatred, but love.