Hatfields and Mccoys - a reflection

The "Hatfields and McCoys" was a mini series this week on the History Channel.  I thought that it was great.  A true "must see" for everyone.  

Really the only bad thing that I can say about the series is the way that it will jump around.  It jumps from place to place and from time to a later time without any warning.  That can be distracting at times.  That said however, they were putting about 60 years of history into a 5-6 hour show, so I think that is understandable.

So reflecting back upon the show, I have been thinking about what I could take away from this experience.  The first thing that I thought of was unchecked anger.  Let me say up front that I do not believe that anger in of itself is evil.  Anger is our natural response when the object of our love is threatened.  If you look that what is threatened when someone gets angry, then you will know what it is that they love.  Another thing about anger is that if left unchecked, it will fester and turn into an evil series of events.  The feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys just shows how bad, bad can get if left unchecked.

Another thing that I thought of is blind family loyalty.    Being blindly loyal to someone is not the same as loving them.  At times they can be opposite of each other.  When you love someone, you do not deny the truth about them.  You don't attack others in order to cover up the evil done by the beloved.  True love will cause you to confront the beloved at times in order to stop them from doing evil.  A cliche  that is often used demonstrates this quite well.  It goes, "Friends will not let friends drive drunk".  Blind loyalty will not only let them drive drunk, but will also attack the person that gets hurt from being in a accident with the drunk and accuse them as being the bad guy.

I love it that Mr. McCoy was shown as a Christian.  You see going to church, knowing the Bible, and the ability to preach to and pray for others, does not exempt someone from theses wrongs.  History has shown that many times those who appear to be the most righteous are the ones that are most likely to show this type of anger and blind loyalty to a certain "righteous" cause.

It is easy to see how things would have been different if the two families had loved each other.  The hard thing is to be able to see that in ourselves.