Ten Things I Hate About You: #2 - Hatred of Others

Several weeks ago, I decided to kick off my ten-post series with a discussion of what is ostensibly one of the most galling issues within modern-day Christianity - sectarian intolerance. To briefly recap, the notion that any one specific church of Christianity is "the right way" or "the only way" to Christianity sets up a deeply toxic atmosphere which fosters an "us versus them" mentality, where the group identity isn't defined in a positive way, but rather in a negative way...a process known as "Othering".

Sadly, this is really only the tip of the iceberg.

For all of the problems that othering carries with it among Christians, it's really a whole order of magnitude greater when we inevitably think about the issue of how Christians relate to other cultures and spiritual traditions. The fundamental issue of how Christianity is to relate to other religions and cultures is one that has arguably been the one of the defining questions facing Christians past and present, and, in world that is increasingly connected and interconnected, is one that Christians simply cannot avoid in the future.

The way that I see it, there are generally two options that we have when it comes to engaging others from which Christians can choose: War and Peace.

The War argument is extremely tempting. Define all that is good by what the group is (and by group, we can mean any Christian denomination of your choosing) - define all that is bad by what the group isn't. Wage war on the people who are not part of the group, and all who oppose can either convert or die. This was the religious argument behind such sterling episodes of human history such as The Crusades, and the European campaigns of conquest of North and South America (albeit, these went hand-in-hand with general wealth and power-grabs).

This of course presents you with some awkward questions. Like, how much is human life worth when comparing two sets of different cultures? Is a Muslim man's life worth any less than a Christian's? People would say, yes, it is, since the Muslim is not a Christian and does not believe in what are held to be "Christian ideals". So then, what are "Christian ideals"? What happens to your definition of "Christian ideals" if you look at someone else's Holy Book and find out that whatever they're saying really isn't all that different in principle than what yours says, except that the names might be changed and the wording might be different? What happens when you come across people who don't believe in the same things you do, but end up living fulfilling, productive lives that are arguably no less blameless than yours, if not more so? And furthermore, what happens if you find that your own "Godliness" is far lacking compared to the other guy's?

Generally, these questions were (and in my experience, are), answered by the general notion of "Praise the Lord, and Pass the Ammunition!" (both metaphorical, and literal). There is no compromise. All of those who are not Like Us are to be either made to be Like Us or should be obliterated. And that ends up making your life pretty hard, doesn't it? Think of the effort you need to expend to wage total war on the outside world. You not only need to cut yourself off from the outside world, but you need to reinforce your hatred of it. So you surround yourself with exclusionary imagery, literature and personalities, all for the singular purpose of feeding your hate of everything that isn't you. Would you imagine being a little kid going to school beating up everyone else because they don't wear the same kind of clothes you wear, or because they don't live on your street? Eventually, you'll have tried to beat up everyone in your school, and you either won't have many friends, or you'll be living in a perpetual state of constant conflict and violence. So now you have an interesting quandary to think about: you've now immersed yourself in a state of hatred and prejudice against everyone and everything outside of your boundary defining "you". Is this what Christ, the "Prince of Peace" really had in mind?

Sure, people will say that it's not really "hate" because it's done in a spirit of "love". We're going to hate and discriminate and wage war on Muslims or gays, or anyone else we choose to vilify, merely just to teach them the error of their ways and turn them to our own ways. That type of logic is tantamount to severely beating a child for not setting the placement at the dinner table in the precise way you wanted them to and saying that it was for their own good. In the end, what serves as a better way of spreading the Gospel (assuming that's the overarching objective behind all of this) - a closed fist or an open hand?

As I said before, it's the absolute height of arrogance for any one group of people to presume that they have strict authoritarian say over what the correct and true way to approach God and divinity is. If God truly is as infinite as many of His believers would have you think, then such people in fact place themselves above God, and it is they who are telling God what to do, how to think, and how to act - the Christians who do this effectively recreate God in their own image. When this happens, people are given free license to do absolutely monstrous things to each other.

While I was poking around at random on Facebook, I came across a post made by someone on a university's Christian group that, from what I understand, was intended to be an all-out scathing "critique" of spiritual beliefs of Native Canadians, as outlined by the government. The message? Christianity (as defined by this person and this person alone, naturally) good, native culture and spiritual beliefs bad, destroy them and make them Christian. Obviously, such language wasn't overtly used, but the subtext was very strong, and hard not to miss. I find such sentiment interesting to read, since it was that same overall sentiment which was one of the factors that arguably fed the general disenfranchising, disgracing, and destruction of Native Canadian and Native American culture and rights for centuries. Indirectly, this implies that God endorses or approved of this, and by extension, endorsed the same for other aboriginal cultures in other parts of the world - a Godly endorsement for forced internment camps, the suffering and death of countless lives, deprivation of land, basic human rights and rights to representation and political power and the establishment of them as effectively second or even third-class citizens.

...which is evidence for a "Good", just and loving God, indeed.