Goodbye Westboro Baptist Church [sic]

I spent a solid ten minutes today looking into the faces of people whose hearts are infected with hate. It was a sorry sight. It was clear that they were performing a well-rehearsed script. The signs they carried argued that God hates the Jews, that God hates homosexuals, that President Obama is the Antichrist. Their chanting was of anti-Jewish lyrics set to Jewish and Israeli melodies. It is clear that their intent was to cause pain to those they hate.

Interestingly, the people who chanted the hateful words were all women. I guess women are not immune from being haters. What I found most upsetting is that they had a child with them carrying one of their hateful signs. Already they have spread the virus of their hate to another generation.

The job remains for all of us to counter their hate with a message of acceptance and love. We are all created in God's image and are entitled to be accepted and respected. I am so glad that those folks are gone from Richmond.

Good “Religious” Hate

Well, the maven did something stupid. I responded to a hate message about Senator Obama and now I am being overwhelmed with all kinds of nastiness in my email. The original message, mailed to a whole bunch of addressees, used a letter from a Christian missionary in Africa that spoke of years of violent oppression against them in that African country. The conclusion was that electing Obama would result in similar oppression here in the U.S. of A. As I often do when I get indignant, I fired off a reply and clicked on “reply all.” That was a big mistake. Now I am getting hate mail from everybody on the list.

What did the maven say that brought on such indignation from the haters? I said,

I have no need for this hate and fear campaigning. If I had any doubt about who I was voting for, you have cleared it up. I'm voting against hate and voting for Obama.
Leviticus 19:18

The scriptural citation was in response to all the cites that filled the hate message. (For those of you not familiar, I was referring to “love your neighbor as yourself.”)

I am sorry, but I have real trouble with anyone who uses religion to stir up hate. I feel the same way about Christian, Muslim, Jewish or any other religious hate that relies on some scriptural text to justify its position. I was raised to believe that God loves all people and that God expects us to love each other.

Why this very selective reading of scripture? Why do the haters ignore all the messages of love in the holy books of all religions? Do these people really think that God wants us to hate each other? To this maven, using God’s name to stir up hate against other humans is nothing but a profanation of that name. We have enough problems in this world without the purveyors of hate trying to stir up people’s passions to do evil. The hate has got to stop!