Those Outside the Church (Who Think They Aren't)

The other day an acquaintance I have unfollowed (but not yet unfriended) on social media tagged me on a post with a Medieval-style recreation of a song I was unfamiliar with. I had no idea what to think about that, so I googled the original, which is a joyous romp with a New Orleans funeral themed video, so I said, "I LOVE it!!" The person said they thought I would since I like Medieval stuff, and I was like, "No, I meant the original video. The Medieval parody is mildly funny." So this person directed me to see another Medieval parody of a well-known 80's hit song on their wall, and so I made the mistake of looking at their wall. Yikes! It doesn't help matters, I suppose, that I find this individual extremely personally unpleasant, so that might cloud my vision. Still, one post was people posing in front of a church in paramilitary garb, which immediately struck me as wrong.

First of all, as Christians, we are called to love our enemies and pray for their conversion, not blow their heads off. Secondly, I feel there was some implicit racism there, that if the people they feared were white Baptists, say, who were coming to destroy statues of Mary (such things are not unheard of), they wouldn't be posing with automatic weapons. But because the presumed culprits would be black, they are ready to shoot them dead. Imagine what scandal this would give to a black Catholic! It certainly gave enough to me that I thought, "Fuck it, I'm Buddhist," and I ordered a Tibetan prayer wheel. But then as I was praying a chaplet (you can't wash the Catholic out of me that easily), my eyes fell on a nativity scene, and I was suddenly overwhelmed with amazement that God came into our world as a human. So I said, "God, how can I be Christian and this other person be Christian too?" God said, "Peace. This person rejects the Pope. They have already put themselves outside of My Church." So I did make a comment on the post questioning what religion people are who think buildings are more valuable than human lives, and this person replied that they would give their life to keep a crucifix from being desecrated. Yes, it is an honorable thing to sacrifice your own life to save a religious article. It is not honorable to sacrifice someone else's life - that's not how martyrdom works. I didn't bother to reply, because this person is beyond seeing reason anyway.

I think a lot of it goes back to how some of these right-wing "Christians" regard nonhuman life, because it is a short step from saying, "Dogs have no souls," to then thinking humans who aren't like you are not human and therefore also don't have souls. This might be the Buddhist side of me coming out, but I think it's important to value all life, or it's too easy to slide into the moral quagmire of valuing no life but your own. So I'll just keep on keepin' on and ignore all these haters. How can you be a hater and a Christian? So pray for this person and all these scary white ethno-"Christian" racists to see the light of reason. God has not given up hope for them, so we shouldn't either.

Famous Hat