It’s
been a while since I’ve blogged. I don’t
have an urge to inflict my opinions on
people on a daily basis, but every so often something happens that
prompts me to put finger to keyboard, either something that has brought me
profound joy and/or excitement or something that saddens and angers me.
Today
I am sad and angry and that sadness and anger has nothing to do with politics
for once. It stems from the appalling
behavior of some who would claim to be followers of Jesus Christ and their
abuse of another Christian, their hatred, vileness and vitriol towards that
person. What makes me even more sad and
angry is that this isn’t an isolated incident.
There are plenty of examples of hatred expressed by those who claim to
be followers of Christ to Christians and non-Christians alike.
If
I go back several years to my time training for ministry I remember writing an
essay on Christianity and Atheism and discovering, in my research, the
thoroughly nasty and sometimes rather bizarre letters and messages received by
Richard Dawkins from people who said they were Christians. Some of them were so vile and so filled with accusations
of sexual deviancy and foul language that I don’t feel it appropriate to quote
them. I felt sick to the stomach just
reading them. The milder ones suggested
that Dawkins would be spending an eternity in hell in eternal conscious torment
that was so bad it would be beyond human understanding.
On
13th May 2015 I blogged about a friend who is a Methodist Minister
who had written a blog about PMS, in a post entitled “PMS, Feminism and
Religious Bigotry”. All she had done was
to post a very well written blog about the effects of PMS, an innocent enough
thing to write about you may think. For
her efforts to enlighten and educate she received abusive comments and threats
from people who would, no doubt, consider themselves religious and claim that
God is on their side.
Now,
today, I was saddened to see Christian song writer and singer Vicky Beeching
has been forced to take a break from social media because of the behavior of
those who would claim God is on their side.
Again, I am not going to repeat the abuse she has received on Twitter
and through letters posted to her address because of her sexuality. I am not going to post the image of Vicky
that was used, without a consent she would never have given, to promote an
anti-homosexual message.
I
will never understand how a person can claim to be a follower of Jesus, perfect
selfless love personified, and express such hatred towards another person,
whether they are a brother or sister in Christ or not. What really motivates them? Why do they do it?
Jesus gave us a new commandment, to love one another. We cannot
call Jesus our master with integrity and then fail to obey his commandment to
love.
In
his first epistle the Apostle John wrote, "love us from God: everyone who
loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know
God, for God is love". (1 John 4:7-8, NRSV).
Writing
vile things to people is not an expression of love but hatred. Even if we consider a person to be our enemy,
Jesus told us to love our enemies.
No
doubt those who write these thigs will claim either that they are just pointing
out sin or they are defending God. Those
are the usual excuses. Well, it is far
from certain that same-sex relationships are sinful (I don’t think, after
extensive study and exegesis of the relevant passages that they are): but even
I they are sinful, isn’t that between the individual Christian and God? The scriptures make provision for initially
meeting privately with somebody who has sinned against you personally, but not
for going around publicly accusing people and writing vile things about
them. Jesus told us not to judge others,
but to look to our own sin (the plank in our eye).
As for defending God: does God actually need us to do that? Seriously?
And how is giving the impression that God is full of hatred and malice,
rather than love, goodness and justice, defending God anyway?
I pray that those who engage in this kind of behaviour would come to see
that what they are doing is wrong and is not what God wants them to do. If we Christians cannot love each other and
love the world then what kind of witness for Jesus Christ are we giving?
