How the World Runs

Last week, I saw a girl (or young woman I guess) who was carrying a purse with several buttons. Most were aimed at Republicans and Christians.  One said "Stop using Jesus as an excuse for being a narrow-minded asshole."  Another read, "Yeah, that's right Jim Bob, I'm a lesbian.  Now get back in your trailer".  Obviously, both of these were painting Republicans and Christians (or the noisy Evangelicals) as narrow-minded and dumb.  Now, both of these things can be true.  But they are overstated and Evangelicals are also given a bad name.  They are not the terrible people they are made out to be.  Possibly misguided -depending on your opinion- but not evil.  The larger point, however, is what this shows about most people.  

By the way, this girl is training to be a teacher.  Sad that someone so biased and obviously uneducated about Christians will have the access to young minds and the ability to shape them. Of course, many teachers are biased.  Sadly, they often express their bias(es) in the classroom.

The larger point though is how this girl is dealing with what she feels is oppression and stupidity.  What does she do when she thinks people hate her?  She hates them back.  Sadly, this is typical.  It's easy to hate people that hate you.  We're not taught differently.  Of course hate doesn't foster any growth, it just makes the problem worse and hurts the person who hates.

Of course, this is not Jesus' message.  He has a message of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. He demonstrated this both during His life and on the cross.  Sadly, it's a message few understand or practice, because it's so easy to hate.  Even many of his followers don't understand.  On September 11th, terrorists hated Americans.  So what did they do?  They went and killed Americans.  After the attacks, Americans were outraged.  Which was appropriate. What did you hear?  Hate.  Hate for arabs and Muslims.  Distortions of Islam.  What else did you hear?  A called to avenge these killings through war.  

The terrorists used hate and killing.  What did American Christians want to fight back with? Hate and killing. (Some of the heaviest and strongest calls for war and support for war came from American Evangelicals.)  They stood for a recipe that will lead to years and generations more of hate and killing.  Shame on them for not accepting the message of Jesus.  Matthew 5:9: "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called God's children."

Sadly, this is how the world runs.  As I've shown, even Christians use hate.  Obviously, there is alot of love in the world.  But we usually only love who we want to.  Who is easy to love.  And our hate always seems to be stronger than our love.  Few attempts at peacemaking or attempts by aid groups are successful, because only a small amount of people love their enemies, as Jesus said to do.  Not only in such global affairs, but in our personal lives.  And few problems receive lasting solutions.  Because the world runs on hate.

(NOTE: I will discuss the issue of Christian/Jew-Muslim relations in a blog soon.)

I've posted a short, related video under comments.