Is Christianity Hate Speech?

This is a question that has up until recently never even occurred to me as even a possibility. 

But then a few weeks ago the Facebook feed of the nation blew up with responses of literally everyone to a certain cover of a Vanity Fair magazine.

Being a lifelong Christian and in a pretty small Christian bubble I was immediately bombarded with the expected right wing conservative response of disgust. The only surprise I had was that it seemed like we had never heard of someone getting a sex change before- like Bruce Jenner was the first person to ever go through this procedure. And then I realized that the responses were so prevalent not because we were more offended than ever before but because for the first time in history we all had a megaphone and a soap box personally handed to us by the Internet. And boy did we sure use it.

I admit that I stayed off social media for a few days because I was just tired of the same articles and blogs rehashing the same opinion over and over again but after about a week I came back to find more surprises. After the uproar subsided a little I began seeing posts from several gay friends expressing their deep sadness for the hate that they were feeling "from all sides." That last phrase just stuck out to me and seemed to be in all of their posts in some way or another. From all sides? That must mean from my side too. 

I thought really hard about what to say in response but could not come up with anything that would actually be heard above the digital megaphone screaming. I chose to let the issue die down before I decided what to say. 

Then a 21 boy shot nine black people while they worshiped and prayed in their church. Then we started talking about if people should have guns available to them. Then we all got offended about whether or not a certain flag should be flown or if it should be taken out of view all together. Then the Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage was constitutionally legitimate in all fifty states. And now #LoveWins is trending everywhere.

So where does that leave me? I am a white heterosexual Christian living in the South. This means that right now whether I like it or not the culture of the day and the media that nurtures it has placed me on the opposite side of #LoveWins, which of course is Hate.

I am still trying to process how this all happened because the very idea that Christianity and hatred and be justifiably equated together goes against everything I know to be true. But here we are.

Central to Christianity is the person of Christ. As a Christian, I look to Him as the best example of how to be a person so when I have a question regarding how to respond to a world of confusion there is no better place for me to look than in the character of Jesus. Was the Christianity Jesus preached hate speech?

Jesus was called a lot of different things. Blasphemer. Lunatic. Ignorant.

But I cannot recall anytime in Scripture, or even in history for that matter, that Jesus was accused of being hateful. I don't know if the first century near eastern world had a word for hate as we understand it but I know that they had plenty of words for love and you would think that they would be able to come up with something that denoted the extreme opposite of love if they had felt that Jesus embodied it. But they never did.

And it wasn't because Jesus was the pansy hippie the movies all portray who only speaks in riddles and takes great care to be nice to everyone He met. Jesus said some really hard things. He called people sons of Hell (and twice a son of Hell for some people), wicked, brood of vipers, hypocrites and even Satan. He flipped tables in anger and chased people with a homemade whip. 

But then He would weep for people. He would look into their eyes and call them daughter and friend. He would take their humiliation upon Himself so that they wouldn't have to bear it anymore. Any word that He spoke which by today's standards would call for a lawsuit He took upon Himself in the form of a physical beating. The people who interacted with Jesus that were unfortunate enough to hear His rebuke were also fortunate enough to see Him die for the things inside of them He was rebuking. 

Does the Western Christianity of 2015, of which I am an adherent, look like that? 

I see a lot of rebuke, a lot of protest, and lot of offense, but very little action. Nobody weeps anymore.

I wonder if just maybe the Government would take our pro-life stance a little bit more seriously if instead of threatening to blow up a clinic we promised to adopt and take care of babies and their unwed mothers for however long it took. I wonder if the face of homosexuality would change if instead of just preaching against it from the safe pulpit we actually got out of our comfort zone to really get to know someone of same-sex orientation and see what they are feeling on the inside. I bet it would be really hard to be accused of hatred when the world saw us laying our lives down for the people we disagreed with.

So is Christianity hate speech? By everything I see on the Internet these days I have no other option than to admit that it is indeed. 

If hate speech is defined as that which attacks an individual or group of individuals on the basis of factors such as belief or lifestyle then I don't know how any honest Christian could say that hate speech is not something we are guilty of on an almost daily basis. We attack homosexuals, liberals, Muslims, the President, Socialists, transsexuals, and anybody else that offends us. We have been attacking the person instead of the enemy controlling the person and we must now deal with the consequences.

Now I know what you are thinking. "I'm not the one who protests with Westboro Baptists, I don't blow up abortion clinics, I don't kill people because of their race, and I don't beat transgender kids into submission. The people who do those things aren't really Christians."

But here is the thing with that argument: the rest of the world doesn't buy it because they see us lumping everybody else into small stereotyped groups to make it easier to call them names. I can't dismiss those who have done horrendous acts in the name of the same Jesus I profess while assuming that all Muslims want to kill me or fly airplanes into buildings. Or that all homosexuals are child molesters. Or that all liberals are Communists. Whether I like it or not when I say that I am a Christian I am claiming not only Christ, but those all around the world and throughout history that also claim Him. 

But by claiming these extremists Christians I am in no way trying to justify their actions. Rather, I wish to do the exact opposite.

I want to apologize. 

To any non-Christian readers I want to personally take the responsibility for a history full of religious terrorism against the world. I am sorry for the hate, the pain, suffering and the attacking words we feel safe to use behind the veil of Social Media. I am sorry for thinking that we were in a war with you. The Bible says in Ephesians 6 that our war is not with flesh and blood (that is, you and me or anybody else out there) but is with the principalities of darkness. In other words, we should not be fighting against you, but against the things that are controlling you and keeping you from the life God has for you. All along we thought you were the enemy when really you were just a POW needing to be freed. As Christians, we believe that sin is very real and blinds us from the Truth while taking over everything we have so that we don't even know who we are anymore. So in an attempt to combat this sin we have inadvertently aimed our weapons at you not even realizing that you were just being used as a human shield. This should be obvious to us since it was only recently that we ourselves were blinded by the same enemy and under the same trap of confusion but we forget. 

I am sorry that we have tried to legislate a morality to a people who will never reap the benefits of that morality. What I mean is that we have painted the picture that to be right with God and get into heaven all you have to do is not be gay or not kill unborn babies. So we have tried to get the Government to enforce our ideals thinking that as long as Congress and the Supreme Court are on our side then everybody is good to go. We have been content with the idea that as long as everyone follows our rules then we have done what God commanded us. This could not be further from the truth. The "rules" of Christianity are things that we voluntarily do out of an expression of gratefulness for what God has already done for us. We don't do them to get saved, but because we are saved. So to say to someone that has yet to experience the incredible feeling of knowing their sins are forgiven and that their life has hope because of what Jesus has done for them that they have to follow our rules anyway is wrong. You don't get to heaven because the Government makes you follow our rules. You get to Heaven by having a personal encounter with a Jesus we have yet to introduce you to.

What you see from us when we put on our offended pants is just the winy tantrum of a child who no longer gets to sit at the cool kid table of political influence. 

The truth is, we are horrible at preaching a whole Gospel. We either preach that everyone is going to Hell or that Hell doesn't exist. We either wave our banner of hatred and judgment or we accept everything as truth until eventually we don't believe anything anymore. We have failed to tell you the whole Truth- that you and I are hopelessly buried in sin and can do nothing to really improve our condition but also that Jesus- the only One who could have done something about our condition- has made it possible to not stay where we are. Hell is a real place, but so is Heaven and I desperately want you to go there instead and I am willing to do whatever it takes to show that reality to you. 

I want to raise a banner of love that won't fly away with a passing trend because it is grounded in the solidity of Holiness.

To my fellow Christians, I can't honestly look at what Scripture says and conclude that this lifestyle of privilege in America will continue indefinitely. Frankly, everything I understand about Scripture and what it means to be Christian says quite the opposite. There will come a time very soon where the freedom to proclaim Jesus in this country will be a distant memory. Let it be because we are nearing the return of Christ and not because the whole world got tired of the squeaky wheel of Christianity complaining loudly about everything that offends us instead of putting our hand to the plow and getting stuff done.

So before you go an put on your offended pants and start shouting your opinion to the digital world- don't. Let's show the world that love does win by preaching the whole Gospel in everything we say and post. I am not saying to shy away from calling sin what it is. I am just saying don't ever call something sin without pointing out the alternative. That is like announcing to a man who fell overboard that he is drowning and should be ashamed of himself but never offering to throw him a life preserver. Or jumping in the water to reach him yourself. 

Let's jump in and put our money where our mouth is.