Hate and Religion: Common Friends

Many of us assume that someone being religious, or in this country particularly, a Christian means they’re a good person.  It’s true, the tenants of Christianity, in fact most religions, teach a basic goodness. Unfortunately, those who claim the mantle of religion aren’t always good people.

What happens is that religions get twisted into something that certain people find appealing to serve the bigotry and hate within themselves.  They create God into their own image and He becomes the hate-filled and vengeful God they wish Him to be.  They can always find some holy text that will back up their beliefs if taken out of context.

Take a group like the Ku Klux Klan, clearly a well-known hate group, yet the group claims to be a Christian organization.  They actually do this by convincing themselves that the bible condones their beliefs along with other historical contexts.  Jews are their main enemy, right down to the bloodline.  They find it easy to include all other races and religions in their attacks upon society.

Here is a quote I found quite interesting, supposedly from a Ku Klux Klan website:

“am often amazed at why so many so called Christians take up a defense for Jews when the Jews will tell you straight out that they do not believe Jesus Christ is the Son of God, if you don’t believe me call the local Synagogue and ask them, then read II John 7: “For many deceivers are entered into the world. Who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in flesh. This is a deceiver and anti-Christ”. Well, that statement is pretty plain and easy to understand, yet most Christians simply don’t get it.”

They seem to forget that Jesus himself was a Jew and a religious Jew at that.  As far as Jews not believing that Jesus is the Son of God, so does every other religion.  So, why are they particularly against the Jews?  Of course, we must remember that these types of people tend to hate everyone else also – Muslims, Gays, Blacks – anyone who’s not like they are as far as skin color, religion or sexual orientation.

Anyone who studied the life of Jesus would know that he taught love.  His life was about giving, not taking.  One thing he made clear, and that is that the Gospel that he brought, was first to the House of Israel and then to the Gentiles. That is also the teachings of the Apostles. The House of Israel is the Jews. The Gentiles would be those of us who are not Jewish.

Muslims also have those among them who twist their holy scriptures, the Quran.  The beliefs of Al Qaeda that caused nineteen men to get on different large aircrafts, highjack them and then crash them into buildings that would cause the largest population death they could possibly execute upon their enemies are not the beliefs of the largest majority of Muslims from around the world.

The kind of people who take religion and twist it into some kind of monster that’s out to destroy and kill all that is different, are not the average type of religious person.  God is not a monster. “God is Love” is quoted from the same bible that the Ku Klux Klan believes in, which is the Old King James Version.

In recent history, a church called the Westburo Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas made the news quite often by picketing U.S. troop’s funerals.  The group carried signs such as “God Hates Fags” and “God Made IEDs”.  Now I’m not Baptist, but I’ve been to a few Baptist churches before and even went to Bible School at a Baptist church one summer when I was a kid.  They were all about teaching the love of Jesus, not about spewing hate messages into the streets.

Reverend Fred Phelps, who is their pastor and the main instigator of these so-called protest, seems to me to be a much better candidate for the anti-Christ than the Jews.  The man and his clan basically took the very mission of Christ and turned it into something vicious and ugly, and certainly diabolically deceitful.  He should know that the God he professes to serve will be judging him with the same judgment he has had on others.  If he knows the Word of God at all, he’d surely know that.

Religion becomes the vehicle by which someone who happens to be a bigot is able to justify their hatred. Groups that have a main agenda of hate, tend to draw birds of the same feather.  This tends to give religion and religions a bad name.  When atrocities are also carried out in the name of religion by these groups, it further decimates religion in the eyes of our young.  It certainly doesn’t give a positive picture of God and what God means to hundreds of millions of people all around the world.

It’s these types of groups that drive societies further away from religion and therefore, God.  They are a small minority of all the religious people in the world and yet their influence and the path of destruction that they leave behind them is something we will never forget.

Hate was the same force that drove those nineteen terrorist on 9/11 to drive those planes into our buildings as it is to groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Reverend Phelps’ Westburo Baptist church.  Hate may come under different banners but it’s the same hatred.

Religion has also been used many times to justify Gay Bashing.  Homosexuality is considered to be a sin in many religions.  I’m not going to debate the wrong or right of homosexuality, but committing violence against someone because they’re gay does not justify the act morally, or in the eyes of God.  As a gay man, I know what it’s like to be attacked because I’m gay. Religion is often used in some context by a perpetuator of violence, as though they’re the messenger, or the hand of God, taking God’s vengeance out on the evil homosexual or the evil Muslim, or the evil Infidel, or the evil Jew.

I’m fortunate to live in a society that is growing more enlightened every day.  I also know that most religious people are good people who fear God, and only want to walk in the love that their religion has taught them to do.  The Christian religion itself doesn’t teach violence but teaches to be generous toward the poor and not to sit in judgment on anyone.

There will always be those who will use religion for their own purposes, to push a hate doctrine and commit violence in the name of God.  It’s as if they believe that God’s not all-powerful and that he needs them to carry out His vengeful work.  As far as the God of the Old Testament of the Bible, He divided the Red Sea so that the Children of Israel could walk out on dry land.  And yet, He needs some of the members of Ku Klux Klan to go out and kill some Jews to send a message that He doesn’t like Jews?

Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. 2 Timothy 3:5.

Using God to be evil does not make God evil.  The perception of God that is perpetuated by people such as Rev. Phelps and the Ku Klux Klan is design that they themselves created, to fit their own hateful doctrine.

Anyone who really wants to know the truth about God, though they be Muslims, Christians, Jews or even atheist,  only needs to study with an open heart and without preconceived ideas of the holy writings of the text that they have based their religion on.

I’ve found it to be the best practice to read my Bible for myself without someone telling me what one scripture or the other means.  I believe God will let me know the truth without prejudice.   Then I can look at those who are different than me, believe different than me, with an understanding that only God has.

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