The funny thing is they say the same thing about the other Christians. Which is the Real Christian? How do people on the outside recognize a Real Christian? Every culture has a different definition it seems. Every denomination has it’s rules. The rules change over time. Who was a real Christian in the beginning when God struck people down for stealing from the coffers and everyone was warned if they didn’t believe and confess their sins they’d be tortured and eventually their souls would be cast in to the lake of fire with hell and death? The sweet mild Christians I know don’t even believe in that part of the Bible now. They think everyone is saved and we’re all God’s children but that’s hardly biblical unless you ignore quite a bit. And I’m also told unless you have the Holy Spirit indwelling you’ll NEVER understand the Bible. So it’s no wonder all I see is Christian being hateful I guess. Their god has made it so that I can’t even see the good unless I already believe!
This is part of the issue. Some people are indeed standing up for what is right, and not compromising - and that’s the right thing to do.
But some other people - (not just “Christians,” but also Antifa, Westboro Baptist, PETA animal-rights activists or whatnot) - are people who already had an unreasonable, self-centered, haughty disposition to begin with - but then taking on a cause that has moral overtones to it just threw a lot of gasoline onto their fire. Because now they’re not nasty and condemning because of their personality - they can now claim that they are that way because they’re fighting for what’s right and good.
I think the question of the o.p. is incorrectly stated. It shouldn’t be “Why are Christians so full of hate?” but rather, “Why do so many hateful people claim to be Christian?” I am not personally a Christian or a follower of any religious faith, and I find many contradictions in the Bible and doctrinal Christianity in general, but the person of Jesus of Nazarath is pretty consistently portrayed as being an empathic, kind, and respectful person to pretty much everyone except the moneylenders in front of the temple who he regarded as opportunistic exploiters and thieves. There is nothing in the New Testament (“Jesus said this,”) which would support racial bigotry, repression of women’s rights, hatred toward LGBTQ people, exploitation of the poor or weak, embracing of the so-called “Social Darwinist” view of society, unregulated access to modern projectile weapons regardless of past misbehavior or indications of emotional problems, and any number of other tenents widely embraced by the fundamentalist Christian contingent.
There are certainly things in the Old Testament (“Jesus ain’t say that!”) which are, to put it mildly, at odds with the message of love and charity spread by the the purported Son of (the Judeo-Christian) God, but then, it would seem that putting Jesus on Earth to begin with was the Christain God’s way of correcting the doctrinal record as it seems to have picked up some errors in translation through the ages and various languages. So-called fundamentalist and radicUIKeyInputDownArrowal Christians engage in picking and choosing (or interpreting the meaning of) various stories in order to justify their particular view of the world, a talent that is certainly not limited exclusively to Christians or even religious believers in general, but it is difficult to reconcile the beliefs of say, Mike Pence, with a guy who allowed himself to be betrayed, flayed, nailed to a cross, suffered in the desert sun, died, and then bothered to come back to life just to reinforce his divinity and make his point like the hero of an action movie who escapes certain death to return and save the day. Personally, if all that shit happened to me, I’d find a nice beach to lay out on and ignore humanity.
If you want to see what a real Christain looks like, check out this guy who has to be goaded into saying something even mildly unpleasent about a man who he clearly (and rightly) views as a contemptible human being, and by the way, doesn’t wear his faith as some kind of shield behind which he can conceal his hatred and fling shit at others.
In most communities, black lives already matter … folks with an honest police department may feel indignant that they’re being accused of racism when they’ve fought hard to eliminate such from their law enforcement ranks …
Some communities this isn’t the case, and it is in these communities that the Black Lives Matter is important … places where “uppity niggers” are beat to death more often than “uppity whities” … the problem is people getting beat to death by police for no other reason than being “uppity” … if African-Americans want to take the lead in this effort, they have my 100% support … as a white guy with hair down to my waist, I know I’m next on the list … I’ve been to Orlando, it’s not just blacks in Sanford or gays at the Pulse nightclub who needs to worry for their life …
Please tell us about this journey you made to “most communities” to see how the police treat African-American citizens. How long did it take, and how many different communities did you visit?
There are some interpretations of Matthew 5 and John 7 (by no means universally held, mind) that say Christ clearly said all of the Old Testament proclamations and prohibitions are still to be followed.
I on the other hand think the word “commandments” is the significant word, and he speaks of the Ten Commandments brought down by Moses, and not all the “stone to death anyone who does something weird” bits in Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
My journey started when I walked through the gate that had the sign over it “In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth” … how can I explain what I’ve seen to someone who is blind and refuses to admit that they are …
Do you want to see this manifest in the flesh? … try Hyannis Port, MA …
I don’t think that “All Lives Matter” is necessarily a hateful message. But it adds nothing to the conversation, and so anyone who says it is at the very least showing that they have no idea what the conversation is about. The Black Lives Matter protestors are saying that all lives matter, including those of blacks. They’re only calling out black lives specifically because everyone already knows that white lives matter. Replying “All Lives Matter” means that you don’t realize that that’s what they’re saying.
I would add to your responses to watchwolf49 that police violence isn’t the only way in which black lives are treated as if they matter a great deal less. For instance, we as a nation have a bad habit of locating hazardous facilities in minority neighborhoods, cutting those neighborhoods in half with urban highways, and being slow to get around to cleaning up chemical waste sites in or near those neighborhoods.
Any given person who says that Black Lives Matter may intend one meaning (that all lives, including black ones, matter) or another (that black lives matter, but they’re certainly not willing to say that all lives matter).
So if a guy announces that Black Lives Matter, I can imagine someone wanting to respond by (a) agreeing, if the first was meant; or (b) drawing what’s seen as a key distinction, if the second was meant; either way, wouldn’t “All Lives Matter” do that? (Heck, if someone ever got all up in your face and asserted that white lives matter, wouldn’t it maybe make sense to reply that all lives matter?)
If someone says “Blue Lives Matter”, what do you think they mean? Do you give such a speaker the benefit of the doubt, or impugn his motives, or guess at them?
If someone believes that in the current state of things, black lives are treated as not mattering, they can just be saying black lives do in fact matter, and that’s it.
There’s no current state of things that says blue lives don’t matter, so “Blue Lives Matter” is not something that needs to be said.
Just interpret “Black lives matter” as meaning “Black lives matter too” or “Black lives matter just as much as anyone else’s” and you’ll have the idea.
Growing up, I went to church with people that I wouldn’t called mean or hateful. But the message preached by the pastor often was of the “thou shall not” nature. It was frustrating to me because even as a child, I found something incomplete about this. Tell us what we’re supposed to do, not what we’re not. Is God’s plan that we lock ourselves in a room where we do nothing but pray, read the Bible, and abstain from sin from all day long? Or we are supposed to be living in a certain way that is actively good? Since good is not merely the absence of bad, what does good look like?
Well, if the pastor ever got around to explaining this, it was lost in his focus on not sinning.
As an adult, I now understand that human psychology has as much to do with this negativity as anything else. Our nature is to focus on what’s bad. It is easier for us to criticize what others are doing than to praise them, and on the flip side, we are more likely to be emotionally affected by criticism than praise. The other thing is that it is simply more efficient for a church to guilt people into coming to church than it is to sweet talk them, because guilt is a powerful motivator. A pastor fails if he doesn’t maintain a congregation, so it’s in his self-interest to preach messages that create this guilt. You do that by focusing on sin.
If negativity is a defining feature of one’s religious expression, then intolerance is just one step away from that.