The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

Publications

Abandon Hate, Ye Who Enter Here

by The Reverend Richard R. Davis

UUCS September 17, 2006

We all have countless, myriad experiences in our lives – most of which are quickly forgotten.  But some experiences just lodge themselves in the memory bank – either because they are wonderful or wretched.  Here’s one memory in that latter category - it’s an experience I had during my first semester in theology school about a quarter of century ago. 

            There I was--a clueless student hospital chaplain assigned to visit patients, way before I felt minimally prepared to do any such thing.  “Wear a coat and tie,” they commanded, so I put on this cheap suit I had found at a thrift shop and went up to visit patients - hopefully to offer them some spiritual uplift in the midst of their suffering. 

One afternoon early in that first semester I wandered into a hospital room to find a cheerful, attractive young woman who didn’t look like she was suffering one bit and did not appear to need much uplift at all.  But who knew?  Appearances can be deceptive. Before we could start a conversation the phone rang and she said “wait just a minute.”  She began chatting and laughing with her unseen acquaintance for some time while I stood awkwardly and waited.  Then a handsome, well dressed young man wandered in and sat down next to her – they were obviously the type that storyteller Garrison Keillor would call “Yuppie scum.” 

While the woman was still on the phone the two of them began playing footsies and engaging in what seemed very much like sexual foreplay.  Meanwhile, I stood by –  an invisible, ignored nonentity.

Finally, the phone call ended and I began to initiate a conversation when it rang again and once more the young woman indicated that I should “wait just a minute.”  The previous scene began to replay itself – everybody was having fun but me, the invisible, indignant witness.  My discomfort began morphing into seething anger and resentment.   Most of all, I resented the way this young couple ignored me, and I imagined that they thought I was some kind of bible toting country bumpkin minister in my cheap suit, whereas they thought of themselves as way too worldly and sophisticated to need any superstitious religious pablum I might have to offer.  Then, too, I resented that they appeared to worship at the altar of material success and it was paying off in spades for them whereas I was living in student poverty.   Nor did it help that they were such an attractive couple.  Whether any of what I imagined about the couple was true or not, I don’t know, but that is what I imagined.

After a good while of impatient waiting I found a small window of opportunity to say that apparently this was not a good time for a chaplain to visit and that I’d try later.  “Yes,” said the young woman.  “Do that.”   It was the last I ever saw of her.   As I left some uncharitable thoughts and feelings went through my mind.  Although I didn’t wish they’d die and go down to everlasting hell, I did entertain the wish that they would soon encounter some purgatorial suffering in their lives that would make them aware of how utterly shallow they were and how meaningless were their lives of wealth and glamour and that perhaps then they’d remember me with regret, realizing how shabbily they had treated me and how they had passed up an opportunity to have an enlightening conversation.   (The medieval Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas did write that one of the perks of heaven is that you get a lofty box office seat from which you can enjoy a view of despicable sinners suffering eternal torment down in hell, and at certain moments in life I have recognized the appeal of this belief.)

Now think about it  –  today there are multitudes of people in the world who are experiencing feelings similar to those I had in that hospital room, only with greater intensity - yet they do not have many of the advantages I have had.   Thanks to the kind of education I’ve been offered and the many insightful people I’ve learned from, and the kind of openhearted religious tradition I belong to – --a tradition which discourages attitudes of hard boiled resentment  – I have come to have enough insight to realize that my negative feelings were mostly about me, and this young couple was just the convenient screen onto which I projected my pre-existing fears, angers and resentments.  

Yet think of the many people in the world who honestly feel as though there is a powerful clique of sophisticated, intellectual, secular, amoral people who do not respect them or take their values seriously, people who fear that the world is passing them by and mocks them and their deeply held values.  I’m talking about earnest people who feel that something is terribly amiss in society – that alien, sterile, scientific teachings of educated elites threaten their youth, that amoral and immoral social and economic forces are threatening precious traditions.  They’re upset and yes, they’re angry.  They’re here in Oregon and every other state in the union, in Europe, Asia, the Mideast and elsewhere. 

More ominously, there are those leaders who can sense this anger and resentment and rather than challenge people to move beyond this and climb to higher moral and spiritual planes of greater understanding and compassion, they feed this anger and resentment, they stoke the fires of selective outrage and tribal intolerance.  They tell their followers that theirs is indeed the one true faith, that their sacred text (very selectively quoted by the leaders) is the literal word of God and is therefore above all human challenge or criticism, that they are all about doing the will of God/ Allah.  Whether such leaders actually believe their own message is something I don’t know.  Probably some do and some are unprincipled opportunists consolidating their power. 

 These religious groups with gripes have grown because they do offer something appealing to many – absolute certitude and a sense of transcendent meaning.  That can be very intoxicating.  Whoever can offer such things in a compelling fashion to other people, whether it is packaged in religious doctrine or political ideology, is going to gain followers, especially during times of great stress and change.  

This is a dangerous thing because such religions lack an essential ingredient in their makeup – a healthy dose of humility.  Lacking this, they become self righteous, intolerant, eager to go on crusades and vanquish or defeat all infidels and heretics, whoever they may be.   A spirit of fanaticism is let loose and this inevitably brings hate into the equation, because fanatics don’t just disapprove of those who oppose them – they hate and loath those who oppose them and relish hearing that God will send them to everlasting hell.   The solid, hidden, unconscious foundation of such hate is fear – the fear of being lost without any guidance, the fear of life having no meaning, the fear of being utterly wrong.  

And what supreme, tragic irony it is that so often those who have sought most zealously to remove evil from the world have unwittingly been its most devoted servants. 

Consider, for example, how this has played out in the area of women’s reproductive rights.  There are many religious folks in this country who adamantly oppose a woman’s right to choose whether or not to terminate a pregnancy, even in cases of rape or incest.  They have no doubt that they occupy the moral high ground and will not compromise or relent until they win a complete victory.  And those who oppose them are often seen as the enemy. 

Consider the advice that Terry Randall, once a leader of the anti-abortion group “Operation Rescue,” shared with his followers a few years ago:  “I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you.  I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you.  Yes, hate is good … if a Christian voted for Clinton , he sinned against God.  It’s that simple.  Our goal is a Christian nation.  We have a biblical duty; we are called by God to conquer this country.”  

I need not tell you that there are those who, full of fanatical zeal, take this gospel of hate to heart, and they go out and kill doctors and nurses who provide abortions, they strap bombs to their bodies and kill themselves and others, they fly airplanes into buildings and kill thousands, and who knows what else they have planned?  I shudder to think what secret plans are currently being hatched by the religious zealots of the world. 

There can be no doubt – in varying degrees, the Gospel of hate has insinuated itself into a number of religious movements.  Some are sophisticated enough to deny this and say that what they really preach is hate for the sin and a love for sinner, but such dubious distinctions are a ruse. Consider, for example, how many Christian leaders say that they disapprove of homosexuality because the bible condemns it, but that they don’t hate the individual who practices it.   Yet I fear that far too often, in the privacy of their hearts and minds, many Christians think to themselves “God hates fags and so do I.” 

What I really fear are the plans that folks in hate-laced religious movements are hatching.   Feeling defensive about their status in the world, they’ve launched offensives on many fronts, both here and abroad.   Right wing religious zealots in our country would like to turn our country into a Conservative Christian theocracy (which would actually be a betrayal of Christianity).  Islamic militants want to overthrow several predominantly Muslim nations in the next several years, establish a large “Islamic Caliphate” and then take on the western world in an apocalyptic conflict, sometime around 2020.

All of this and more is in the planning stages, brought to us by religions that claim to know in advance the will of God.  I hardly think so.  What such groups claim as the mind and will of God is nothing more than an expression their aggrieved, collective egoism, born from the womb of rage and despair.

I can understand why a lot of thoughtful people would like for humankind to “get over” religion and move on.  After all, hasn’t it so often been the bane of humankind?  Yes, it has.  But that’s far too simplistic – religion in its various traditions has also been an inestimable blessing to humankind which has helped us envision our loftiest ideals, embrace our most life affirming values and enact our most loving and compassionate endeavors.

As for us and kindred liberal spirits, there is a feeling of being beleaguered by reactionary religious zealots who want to impose their narrow minded, authoritarian vision upon the rest of us.   They want to take away a women’s reproductive rights, they want to take away our right of assisted dying in this state, they condemn and want to forbid loving same sex unions, they want to impose their religion in the schools and forbid the teaching of legitimate science, they want to tear down the wall separating church and state (a wall they say should not exist) and they say that if you don’t agree with their perspective and agenda then you’re going to hell. 

I don’t know about you, but this kind of religious arrogance makes me upset, even angry.  I want to respect everyone’s faith, but when someone’s religious views demeans and diminishes mine, when it infringes on my rights of conscience and my intellectual freedom, then I must oppose this.  And in such a struggle – which is a good and necessary struggle to protect our freedoms – it can be tempting to let some strong emotions creep in – perhaps emotions like hate. 

But then, at moments like this, when I am feeling emotionally reactive and on the verge of hating the haters I am stopped in my tracks by Jonathan Swift’s devastating, cynical comment:  “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.” 

Is that true?  Sure seems like it much of the time.  What does our tradition have to say about this?   I believe the Universalist half of our tradition speaks most directly to this concern.   It tells us, in so many words, that hate is a heresy.  Yes, I know that we usually use that word “heretic” in a self congratulatory manner and celebrate being religious heretics (literally, those who choose their faith freely regardless of official creeds).  But I’m using the word here to describe attitudes and beliefs that are harmful and are to be avoided. 

Our 18^th and 19^th Century Universalist forebears were the ones who recoiled in horror at the theological doctrine of eternal damnation – they could not imagine how any God of love could condemn any being to everlasting torment.  They rejected the doctrine of damnation and embraced the doctrine of universal salvation – the belief that all souls will be saved, will find ultimate redemption.  The implications of this theology are revolutionary and profound.   Whether or not you accept this entire theological belief as our forebears did, it truly does embody spiritual genius and psychological wisdom.  It puts hate in its proper place, which is outside the realm of acceptable orientations.  Briefly, the logic of Universalism goes like this:  God does not condemn anyone to eternal damnation; therefore I should not wish that any should be there either.   I may be angry and oppose those who seek to do harm or rob us of freedom, but I may not hate them, because once we give hate a foothold it grows and takes up more and more room, and that poses a great peril, as you can see playing out in the religions that do not forswear hate.  

The British historian and religious thinker Herbert Butterfield has rightly noted that “the greatest menace to our civilization today is the conflict between giant organized systems of self-righteousness – each system only too delighted to find that the other is wicked – each only too glad that the sins give it pretext for still deeper hatred and animosity.”   Which is to say that there are millions of people – perhaps billions – both here and abroad, who are primed right now to launch into a holy war to end all holy wars. 

The spiritual genius of our faith tradition challenges us to have a larger vision, a greater hope; it challenges us to transcend the personal and collective ego mind states that offer hate a home.  Our tradition challenges us to take the path, hard and steep as it may be, of understanding, forgiveness, mutual acceptance, reconciliation. 

The psychological wisdom of our faith tradition reminds us that when we hate another, we diminish ourselves and engage in self hatred, for in hating we invariably project onto others what we hate in ourselves.  Hate hurts both the giver and the receiver.

Sometimes when people join this congregation they have sometimes asked me if there is a theological litmus test for members, and I’m pleased to say that in our free, noncreedal religious movement, there isn’t.  But, I will also often say that if ever someone comes here who embraces some belief system that uses rock hard hate as a building block – hatred of another race or creed or type of persons, then I would suggest that they are not yet ready to call themselves a Unitarian Universalist.  

We don’t have a creed, but our faith tradition does invite, entice and challenge us to abandon hate and walk in a particular direction – the one that leads towards infinite compassion.   And as we walk on this path, let us remember that our brothers and sisters who have been seduced by the gospel of hate in its many clever guises, need and deserve to be saved – saved from the harmful, diminishing and destructive force we call hate. Let us be sensitive to their fears and angers and seek to create new pathways of understanding.  May we each one do whatever we can to fulfill this holy mission.