“Public enemies. These are the Orcs at the gates. You are not called to love the barbarian horde that is planning to break into your city and pillage, plunder, rape, and mutilate you and your people. You don’t love that horde. That is your enemy and you pray – this is where you have imprecatory …
I’m an atheist, but that doesn’t make us enemies. Not necessarily. Growing up, if someone said God bless you, I just said thanks. And if someone said Merry Christmas to Jews or Muslims, the point was that it was wishing someone well, right? And if someone wanted to say grace, I just bowed my head and listened politely.
But long about the mid-80’s, evangelicals decided that just my existence, or that of Jews or Muslims or Buddhists, was somehow persecuting them even though I’d never said a bad word about them, and frankly felt more kinship to them than those traditions that were foreign to me.
Circumstances have taught me that we are all united in a struggle to survive, to lift one another up and thus lift ourselves up, and leave a better world behind than the one we entered. And that includes people with whom I disagree — sometimes vehemently.
I think faith is a dangerous thing, but for some it can be ennobling. Whatever issues I might have with doctrine and dogma, people who truly embrace the teachings of Jesus in the Bible are my brother in cause, if not in spirit ('cause I don’t believe in that stuff).
I’m an atheist, but that doesn’t make us enemies. Not necessarily. Growing up, if someone said God bless you, I just said thanks. And if someone said Merry Christmas to Jews or Muslims, the point was that it was wishing someone well, right? And if someone wanted to say grace, I just bowed my head and listened politely.
But long about the mid-80’s, evangelicals decided that just my existence, or that of Jews or Muslims or Buddhists, was somehow persecuting them even though I’d never said a bad word about them, and frankly felt more kinship to them than those traditions that were foreign to me.
Circumstances have taught me that we are all united in a struggle to survive, to lift one another up and thus lift ourselves up, and leave a better world behind than the one we entered. And that includes people with whom I disagree — sometimes vehemently.
I think faith is a dangerous thing, but for some it can be ennobling. Whatever issues I might have with doctrine and dogma, people who truly embrace the teachings of Jesus in the Bible are my brother in cause, if not in spirit ('cause I don’t believe in that stuff).