On Hate

I suspect that most of us who blog on a regular basis are like people who set themselves on fire and then attempt to extinguish the flames with an axe (unless you only blog about puppies and babies, which is probably not a bad idea).

So, yesterday I picked a topic that opened up sensitive areas for people—people about whom I care deeply. I used the NOH8 Campaign as a launching point, not to demean a legitimate vehicle of protest, but rather to look at the larger issue of polarization and anger that seems to permeate our society. The challenge to NOH8 was not about combatting hatred; it was about my concern that opposition in any form might be classified as hatred. The post was not about gay rights; it was about how we as people have come to use caricature and categorization rather than civil discourse to fight our political and religious battles.

This is not a NOH8 issue (it’s just that they are prominent in the news right now). It’s a larger cultural and maybe even global issue. Some examples:

When Christians who embrace the Tea Party Movement are asked how they reconcile the writings of Ayn Rand (her Atlas Shrugged has been called the Tea Party Bible) with the teachings of Jesus, the questioners are sometimes suspected of being “socialists” by merely asking the question.

When political leaders differ with one another, labels of “fascist” or “communist” fly through the air.

When people protest against particular wars, they are often called “unpatriotic” or “un-American,” as if being pro-war (one of the worst evils to be visited upon the planet) is a sign of one’s national loyalty.

When Christian scholars suggest that there might be more than one way to understand certain doctrines, you hear the word “heretic” echoing off the walls.

Once you have labeled and categorized your opponents, you have turned them into objects. Objects are easy to hate.

I have the privilege of working for an academic institution that places a high value on civil discourse. Rather than engaging people of other faiths or other traditions in a combative manner, they seek to listen deeply in order to properly understand the other. They do this, not in an abandonment of their own Christian convictions, but instead with a deep commitment to their faith, and with the expectation that the other will come to the table with a similar sincere commitment to their beliefs. In that environment, caricatures break down, categories unravel, and understanding emerges. Without such willing discourse, people continue to run the risk of bearing false witness against one another. We who are followers of Jesus should tremble at that possibility.

We human beings should not kid ourselves about hatred. It is not going to go away any time soon. Thousands of years of human history show us that hatred, violence, and inflicted suffering visit us repeatedly. I support any effort to call for an end to hatred, bullying, discrimination, and other violations. But winning political, legislative, and cultural battles will not erase hatred from our planet.

Only love has the power to do that.

Love does not see the “other” as an object to be caricaturized or categorized. Love sees the other as one of deep value, whether or not there is shared agreement on all topics or even when violence and injustice is inflicted. For some of us, hearing the story of Jesus provides an image of such love, when he is unjustly condemned to death and then nailed to a Roman cross to die, yet prays that his killers would be forgiven because they didn’t know what they were doing. NOH8.

The NOH8 folks have graphically illustrated a profound truth: Hatred seeks to silence its detractors. Hatred wants to duct tape any mouth that would speak with a different voice. We humans all run the risk of committing that crime. History shows us that, quite often, the oppressed later become oppressors and the persecuted become the persecutors. It’s an ugly reality, and it isn’t going to go away. All people carry a role of duct tape in their pockets. Not all will use it, but it’s there just in case.

Love, however, doesn’t seek to silence others. Someone has said that love is patient and kind, not envious, boastful, arrogant, or rude; love doesn’t have to have its own way and doesn’t cheer when others fall, but rather celebrates when things are truthful.

I think that NOH8 is a clever title, and the 30,000-plus photos of people with their mouths taped shut is a creative visual reminder of how oppression works. But I’d like to see if someone could come up with something like that regarding love. Not sure what that would look like.

Maybe it could look like Jesus.

The NOH8 Campaign

On this day after the overturning of The Defense of Marriage Act, I’ve been doing a bit of reading about the “No Hate” (cleverly abbreviated as NOH8) Campaign. Here’s what the website declares as its mission statement:

“The NOH8 Campaign is a charitable organization whose mission is to promote marriage, gender and human equality through education, advocacy, social media, and visual protest.”

The campaign illustrates its mission through over 30,000 photographs of people—many of celebrities or politicians—with duct tape over their mouths, symbolizing the silencing of their voices when Proposition 8 was passed in California.

I’ve been thinking about NOH8’s mission statement. I understand the arguments for marriage equality (meaning that marriage should not be limited to one man and one woman. We still seem to deny such equality to underage people, so the opportunity is not entirely equal to all). I appreciate the call for human equality, if what that means is that all human beings are of equal value (of course, such equality shifts a bit based on one’s social status and net worth).

But the call for gender equality puzzles me. I’m just not sure how that works. There is a co-humanity that underlies gender, and a kind of gender equality exists between members of the same sex (as long as size doesn’t matter). I just don’t get how the male gender is equal to the female gender.

I’m all for equality of opportunity, voting rights, etc., when it comes to gender. But, when it comes to comparing women to men, I’m pretty sure that the parts are different (if memory serves). There is a difference of hormonal makeup between men and women. Woman can bear and give birth to children, while men are made to watch TV in their underwear while eating potato chips and drinking beer.

Equality is an important word. You can give me two cookies to eat, and I eat them. Then, even while the crumbs are still dangling from my lips, you can give me two more and I eat them also. Or, you can just give all four cookies at once and watch me eat like a starving pig. Either way, I have eaten four cookies. Two plus two clearly equals four.

But equality and value are not necessarily the same. A dollar bill is different than a stack of a hundred pennies, but the value is the same. A dollar bill has similarity to a hundred dollar bill, but they differ in value (yet neither is value-less).

I have to say that I’m a bit concerned about the movement to flatten all things out to something called equality. From what I’ve seen, if someone has a different view (not necessarily hateful, but just different) about marriage, for example, the word hate is applied to that person. Hate is not equal to love. There is no equality to be had. So is equality only to be found in unanimity of opinion? Does that unanimity equal non-hate? Does it equal love?

There was a notion about equality in Jesus’ day. Long ago, Moses had pushed against the dominant, tribal practices of retribution (as in, you steal my chicken, I kill your entire family) by directing people toward an equality of response: An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Punishment and recompense needed to fit the violation.

But Jesus challenged that sense of reactive equality by insisting on an entirely different response to an offense, one that flew in the face of any sane person’s view of equality:

“But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile.” (Matthew 5:39-41)

Jesus’ words violated the dominant view of the culture. So was he a hater? I don’t think we would say that. Maybe those who espoused equality regarding retribution were the haters. But who makes that call? If the culture at large demands a particular point of view, isn’t anyone who speaks differently a hater? Who now defines hatred? Jesus was condemned to death on the basis of the claim that he was a hater—he hated God’s temple, he hated Caesar, he hated the status quo. They duct taped him to a cross to silence him.

In our time, it seems like disagreement and difference of opinion are tantamount to hatred. This worries me. I am all for standing against hatred. Hatred spawns violence, oppression, and murder. I am just concerned about categorizing any contrary views on a topic as hatred.

In fact, I may now be a hater just because I’m not sure that gender equality makes precise sense. I’d better go find some duct tape.