Love One Another

I just don’t get it!

I mean I really do not understand.

It makes no sense to me at all.

I cannot comprehend a reasonable, rational, sane person acting that way.

I have just about had my limit of hate in the name of Christianity.  I understand there are hateful people.  I understand there are mean people.  I understand there are people who just don’t like other people.  But I am not talking about ordinary people. I am talking about people who claim to be Christian.

 If we claim to be Christian that means we try our best to follow in the path of Jesus.  Jesus loved, accepted, forgave, and welcomed.  I can’t think of a time when he demonstrated hate or intolerance or exclusion.

 So tell me how folks who really believe they are following Jesus can burn the Qur’an on September 11^th?  Have you heard about these folks?  The Dove World Outreach Center will burn the Qur’an to stand against the evil of Islam because they say “Islam is of the devil!” 

 Many Americans seem to have difficulty separating a Muslim from a terrorist.  Islam is not a religion of violence and terrorism any more than Christianity is a religion of bigoted, book burning, Islamophobes.

 The same dynamic is playing itself out in the debate of the location of an Islamic Community Center in New York near the site of the Twin Towers.  The people who crashed into the Twin Towers were radical, hateful, terrorists.  They may have claimed to be Muslims but they are not representative of their faith.  The Christians who are protesting a community center (which will contain a memorial to the victims of 9/11) are not representative of my faith.  The terrorists also crashed a plane into the Pentagon.  There is a Muslim Prayer room in the Pentagon.

 So often when I talk with people who have given up on organized religion, I hear the same story.  They are fed up with so-called Christians who spew hate.  They want nothing to do with an organized group whose members are anti-gay, anti-feminist, anti-other world religions, and seem to be anti-love, anti-acceptance, and anti-welcome.  I can really identify with their concern. 

 Being Christian is not about using God or the Bible to justify our prejudices.  Rather it is about following Jesus to new understandings of community, relationships and neighbors.  If people want to be hateful and nasty I guess that is their choice.  But I sure wish they would stop calling themselves Christian as they do it.  It gives the rest of us a bad name.