That old Black Eyed Peas song couldn’t be any more relevant as this time. Where is the love? Hate, violence, and terrorism have continued to grow in our world exponentially. This week was a plethora of horror and disaster for many parts of our world. In just one day: Japan was dealing with the remains of a massive earthquake, a funeral was bombed in Baghdad, there was a suicide bombing in Beirut, and a multi-site terrorist attack in Paris (ironically, the city of love). In less than 24 hours, we lost over 115,000 souls, and some of them to acts of pure terror and sheer hate. To put things in perspective: we lose many souls around the world to all types of hate every single day. Note here that we can’t solely look at this as something that happened to our beloved city overseas, and that this is not the first act of evil that has ever been done. Evil is all around us all of the time, and it’s time we start taking note of it.

I want to zoom in on something specific, and that is that terrorism absolutely has no religion. Now I’m certainly not educated in every religion out there, but I don't believe it's particularly necessary to be in order to understand that there is a god in every religion. In no way does any god that is worshipped, no matter how they are worshipped or what is practiced under them, authorizes or is pleased by hate/terrorism (and I’d seriously be interested to see someone argue that statement). The reality is that over time, man has used things such as religion, scripture, and falsely-interpreted “messages” from their god to twist the literal meaning of them into something that fits their personal desires and opinions.

As a young Christian (and I am simply using this as an example to make this a little more clear), I have seen this countless times so far in my walk of faith. “Jesus” has sadly become an uncomfortable word for many to say, unless it is used in vain or as a joke. One who walks with Christ is seen as this wicked, judgmental human in the eyes of those who don’t know Christ. The reason for this is that some “Christians” who mold God’s Word to fit their own liking are the ones telling homosexuals that God hates them, ridiculing transgenders, and speaking cruelly to those who are in any way reluctant to follow Jesus. But in actuality, if one were to actually take some time to open up the Bible, they’d come to see that Jesus had plenty of chances to hate others, ridicule them for their sins, and to curse others for what they had did to Him. But He never did! He was always the one loving the hated souls and favoring the underdog. When everyone else in the world saw a hopeless sinner who had no reason to ask for forgiveness, He saw someone who was worthy of being forgiven. Jesus did nothing besides love. And according to scripture, that is exactly what Christians are to do, and nothing less.

So just to clarify a little: Christians do not hate homosexuals, homophobes hate homosexuals. Christians did not protest at a soldier’s funeral, the Westboro Baptist Church picketed a soldier’s funeral. Muslims were not responsible for 9/11, Al Qaeda was responsible for 9/11. Muslims should absolutely not be associated with terrorism! Terrorists should be associated with terrorism.

Do you see the pattern? We can’t tie terrorism to religion as a whole because doing so completely disregards what religions are all about. Not only are we placing people who follow these religions in one bin (a pretty unfair bin to be in, if you ask me), but we are also piling on more violence and hate into the world in response to all of the hate we already see going on in the world.

This weekend, ISIS claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks, calling it the “first of the storm." That is scary, friends. This is the time we need to be using love as our tool to bond to each other. Before this information was revealed, I was seeing tons of people on social media ridiculing Muslims and blaming them for these horrible events. We HAVE to stop this pattern of thinking! If every single living and breathing Muslim wanted to terrorize countries and kill innocent civilians, then they would be. But instead, many are having to defend themselves against people who blame them for something that they condemn.

We can’t keep fighting violence with violence. It is dangerous and all it really does is add more violence. There is enough hate in this world; coming at a religion based on one's narrow view of their beliefs, and using those who have twisted around the meaning of those beliefs is not going to make this world a better place. We need love more than ever right now. Give the people you’ve lost touch with a call, forgive your enemies, mend friendships, smile and wave at people walking by you, pray for this world every day. We can’t keep living in patterns of hate and violence, as these are what cause love to be diminished and terrorism to start in the first place. If our goal in this world is peace, than we aren’t going to get there without exerting exploding amounts of love.