So Much Hatred

 

I keep reading about the mass shooting in Colorado Springs, where a man with a long rifle killed 8 people and wounded 18. He shot up an LGBTQ club and it was only because two brave patrons got the gun away from him that more people weren’t killed.  There’s been a lot of tension in the community and a lot of hatred directed toward the LGBTQ community. Representative Lauren Boebert is a representative there and she’s been spewing hateful messages.  She even criticized President Biden for his message of sympathy to the community. She is catching a lot of heat for that but she doesn’t care. The haters think they are Christians. They are not. I read the Bible through. The Old Testament features an angry God and condemnation of people who are “other”, which includes people of different colors, regions, customs and religions. This is what those christians are following. Ironically, they denigrate Jewish people and the Old Testament is mostly about them. They were the chosen people, not the christians and Christians. The New Testament is different. Most of it portrays a loving, forgiving God. Jesus preached love and acceptance for everyone, even the “sinners”. Remember the greatest commandment of all, Jesus taught, was to love God above all and to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. There weren’t any caveats attached. Love all the neighbors, no matter their color, faith, gender. As for condemning any behavior, Jesus also said whoever is without sin can cast the first stone.  None of us are without sin. The ongoing hatred all over this country is makes me ill sometimes. It doesn’t have to continue this way but it means people need to get together and speak up. We don’t want this hatred. We don’t want our rights taken away. Rep. Adam Kinzinger started a group called Country First and it’s an attempt to get reasonable people together and work toward saving our democracy and fixing it. The group endorsed not only Republican candidates but Democrats and Independents too. What can we do?  I think we need to start doing what the Rethuglicans did. We need to get involved on school boards and in local governments. We need to make a change so that CRT isn’t something to be feared but embraced. There are a lot of painful things to learn and repent for but we can do it if we want to love all people and be inclusive. I would like to see CRT in preschools too. The reason is because if the parents are racist or bigoted, that’s what they will teach their children to be. But they could learn something different in school. Funny. My Deaf parents were bigoted.  They believed stereotypes about different people. When I got to be a teenager and started reading books like To Kill A Mockingbird, I got a whole new perspective. I challenged them. I asked them why they were bigoted against certain groups when they, themselves, also suffered from the ignorance of those who could hear. They had no answer for me.  They were angry with me for challenging them.  My kids were brought to embrace diversity. I think we’ve all learned we can’t reason with adult tRumpers or election deniers. It’s like a lost cause. They are clueless that they are voting against their best interests and are not interested in listening to any point of view. It’s the kids we need to approach and teach. They shouldn’t have to learn about our true history and about how wonderful diversity is the same way I did: reading books out of school with no one to provide guidance about the material or to hear what I thought. I was never taught about how Native Americans were treated nor about slavery. I didn’t learn about Jim Crow laws. I didn’t learn about the Holocaust. They were all things I learned on my own time and had no one else to share with or to help me process everything. The hatred against people of color and Jewish people hurt.  I felt then as I do now that we are all one people. That there should be such hatred is evil, the work of the Devil.  I know that not everyone in the world is Christian but I am sure we all have a common belief: there is a power greater than all of us and there is also evil. Both of these entities have different names.  There are enough similarities that we have no business hating “others”. It needs to stop. Please.