Have you ever wanted to kill someone? Hitler maybe? People who torture children? How would you rest with the idea they died sweetly in old age and got off scot-free after all they did?

Reports of what hell was like for some folks who had after-death experiences seems to indicate punishments, eternal ones, that fit such folks. It’s hard to think of a righteous loving God not requiring this of those who’d willingly savage His children during their time on earth.

God actually didn’t create hell for people, He made it for the unholy angels who live to do evil and get others to do it. It is meant for them. But for those people who go along with demonic thoughts and feelings instead of God’s, they get the end result when they die and join with all the rest of the evil beings in a realm they both deserve.

But you likely didn’t know Hitler personally, nor, hopefully, child torturers. Most people though can name people who have either ruined some part of their lives at some point or are unbearable to be with. Jesus has said to forgive your enemies and to just live in that forgiveness principle all the time, getting the pardon for all your own evil thoughts as well, when you do that; He has said these bad thoughts of yours include hating your brother, even silently thinking he’s a fool, and that it counts as real evil, “He who calls his brother a fool is in danger of hell-fire.” So how do you stay on that wave-length, the one that goes the way of God and not the way of loathing, the one that loves big enough not to be bothered by small-minded nasty behaviour from others?

There is always forgiveness that can be done on the spot but it doesn’t really cure the dislike from happening. So here’s a thought that is the thought for this week: drop to a deeper layer.

We’ve all got layers. You could think of the immediate moment and the part of you that fronts into it, as being the surface you. This part does the cheesy smiles and the gush of emotion that smooths your day with people or does whatever thing fits the social situation, the part that says the right thing or the easiest one.

Next is the layer under that that runs like an undercurrent, there all the time. This is your personality with its set likes and dislikes, its typical choices, its tendencies. You cruise on this one; it may have ups and downs but it doesn’t change all that much, nor is it likely to express what it’s truly feeling most of the time about other people. It makes up your inner thoughts, your personal world.

Under that is an almost animal thing that even keeps chugging along in your sleep and has been there all your life – it answers to basic needs, deep survival ones, such as needing to eat, escape, get housed, belong, be made secure.

The irritation from other people mainly jars on these three levels of ours. Think the surface one of the immediate moment wherein someone insults you or doesn’t return your smile. Think the deeper one of the personality layer where it might be that someone has the opposite personality type to you and keeps trespassing on how you think and feel or want things done. And at the next level down, for sure anyone who thwarts your primary needs is a real threat – that person you’d likely fight with and would hate for sure if they defeated you in getting your survival needs met.

But there’s another layer. Deeper down even than your animal drives and needs is a part of you that is in touch with the eternals. This part has the measure of the worth of your whole life. It’s the abiding part that was there before you were born, that has been there riding underneath all you’ve ever experienced, and you’ll be standing there in this part summing up your life’s journey at the end when you die. It doesn’t reckon insults very much, isn’t all that concerned about styles it likes or dislikes, and doesn’t feel the need to kill or be killed. It’s outside all of that.

This part of you recoils at the idea of sending any other human being, who also has an eternal core, into endless hellish suffering. For sure it also cannot accept – cannot even negotiate the idea of – horrendous deeds done by man to his fellow man, but by that token it also cannot enter into wanting people who do them to be tormented forever. This is the part of you that would take back its fantasy wish that someone was dead, if truly faced with that choice, into one of wanting them spared; maybe punished enough to change, but spared all the same. It would not hate with a never ending hate, enough to become fit for the fate designed for hateful people. It just doesn’t feel hurt enough or threatened enough to ever want that. It knows it continues beyond this life and abides its way through this one.

This layer is there in everyone. Mostly you drop down into it when you get peaceful and things are okay, but it’s there inside you all the time anyway. It’s available. The Kingdom of God is very much within you, as Jesus said it was. He has put eternity into the heart of every man, as the scriptures say.

The next time you can’t stop yourself burning against someone, you might want to take advantage of this layer. Go to it. It is the bottom line.