I haven't posted in a while, but I feel like I need to.. Various things in life have been going on but one thing I'd like to address right now is the issue of "Christian" Bigots.
Gandhi once said something along the lines of "I love your Christ but I do not like your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ."
This amongst many other things like "good Christian" people toting about signs that say "God hates fags", or posting "Bomb making next drive" in their lawns when they live next to Mosques not only annoys and frustrates me but truly makes me believe that they not only slander others but slanders the name of Christ when they do evil in that name. Jesus said let those who are without sin be the first to cast a stone.. repeatedly within the Bible there is urging for temperance and love... there is a Talmudic (Jewish Rabbinical) story that goes.. When the Jews had made it to the other side of the dead sea and Pharaoh and his charioteers had been washed overboard the angels rejoiced, God looked at them and said "How dare you rejoice over the deaths of my children." If "evil" Pharaoh was not to be maligned, and his death was not to be rejoiced over.. how much more should we rush not to do harm against our neighbors.. Further.. when Jesus said "love your neighbors as yourself" Jesus specifically did not say, "Love your friend as yourself." or "Love your brother as yourself" but rather "Love your neighbor" and in this world of technology, everyone is our neighbor.. we are connected to everyone and thusly we must treat everyone with the love that we treat ourselves with.
Perhaps not the most eloquent of blog posts, but something that I've been wanting to talk about for a while.
When I see posts like this, I do agree, but the problem comes when the people who are opposed to that sort of thing don't see what they do as hate.
ReplyDeleteYou referenced the Phelps Cult in there. They legitimately believe that allowing people to live sinfully is a hateful thing to do. You're denying people the opportunity to go to Heaven because you didn't have the courage to tell them that they were going to hell. Calling people fags and making them feel maligned is an act of love in this twisted worldview because it might cause them to repent and start living in a fashion more befitting their idea of what God wants.
That's why I've given up on the love argument because the most determined bigots will use love as their weapon. I've taken instead to pointing out the selective nature of those who would use the Bible like that. They tend to be big fans of proof texting because it doesn't require any sort of context to be able to find five or six passages that sound like they support your pre-conceived worldview. Opening up the wider Bible and discussing how five or six passages are nothing compared to the dozens of passages about helping those less fortunate or how terrible it is to be rich is a stronger argument, I feel.
I can't help but think of the guy who got a tattoo of the verse in Leviticus that suggests it might be sinful to be at least a homosexual man (it's unnecessary to have those passages for women because it's already a sin to be a woman regardless of orientation to these people), not seeming to realize that Leviticus also prohibits tattoos with the same force.