Hearing about a bomb going off in Jerusalem is entirely different when you have two daughters living there. You scramble for your phone. You search out your kids. Any potential delay in their answering their cells is painful. You finally get through. Thank G-d, they're alright. But what of those who aren't? Those maimed and killed who were also someone's daughters, sons, mothers, and fathers.
The news lately has been sickening. And while the Japanese earthquake is not something we can control, the knifing of three-year-old-children in Israel, bombs against civilians in Jerusalem, live fire against protesters in Bahrain, and the use of helicopter gunships against Arab civilians in Libya is something we can stop.
So why don't we?
Why does evil continue to flourish so mightily in the year 2011? How is that Gaddafi, who owns the home literally next-door to me in Englewood, New Jersey, could get away with blowing up planes and discos for forty years and only when he starts using RPG's against demonstrators can be declared by an American president to have 'lost the legitimacy to rule'? Why has the Mafioso Assad family continued to rule Syria for decades? And how can Palestinian-terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah continue to murder Jewish civilians and pay barely any price with the international community?
Because we have forgotten how to hate evil.
Early Christians like St. Paul embraced the Jewish Bible but rejected what they called the 'vengeful' G-d of the Old Testament. In his place they gave us Jesus, a deity who they said was synonymous with love. Hate no longer had any place, including hating evil. So whereas the Hebrew G-d of the Israel says explicitly in the book of Malachi, "I love Jacob but I hate Esau," where the former is representative of those who struggle for peace and the latter is a symbol for those who live by the sword, Jesus says in the New Testament that one must love even one's enemies and turn the other check to an attack, seemingly advocating passivity in the face of blind cruelty.
Shortly I will argue that this sanitized version of Jesus -- a rebel against Rome who was put to death by the empire for opposing Caesar and Roman rule -- is utterly inaccurate. But the effects of the misapprehension are felt till today. In the twentieth century genocide was commonplace. A few of the better-known examples include the Turkish slaughter of the Armenians during the First World War, the German holocaust of the Jews, the Khmer Rouge and their killing fields in Cambodia in 1975-78, the Hutus hacking to death the Tutsis in Rwanda in April 1994, the ethnic cleanings of Croats by Bosnian Serbs, and the wholesale slaughter of black Christians in the Sudan by white Muslim Janjaweed militias.
How did the world allow so much suffering? Because we practice love without hate, which means we often lack the motivation to stop monsters from committing their crimes against innocents.
Is anyone surprised that China, whose president was recently given only the second state dinner of the Obama presidency and who is currently brutalizing reigning winner of the Nobel peace prize, is also opposing the use of force against Gaddafi in Libya? So why do we accord this government so much respect?
At times it becomes almost comical, as when the Carter Administration actually lobbied to have the Khmer Rouge be recognized in the UN as the legitimate government of Cambodia. Or when Kofi Anan, at the time head of all UN peace-keeping forces worldwide, forbade General Romeo Dallaire of Canada, who commanded the UN peace-keeping force in Kigali, from using force to stop the Rwandan genocide. Anan would later be rewarded for his lack of abhorrence for genocide with becoming UN Secretary-General.
But can love really exist without hate? Can someone claim to love the 1.5 million children who were killed by Hitler without hating the SS who gassed them and dashed their brains against rocks? Can you love the 800,000 Rwandans who were savagely cut up by machetes in Rwanda without hating the Hutus who just a few hours earlier were their friends and neighbors? Can you claim to love peaceful protesters in Tehran while refusing to hate the tyrant Ahmadinejad who mows them down in the streets? And can you love the victims of Pan Am 103 without hating Gaddafi for raining their bodies down over Lockerbie?
And spare me the argument that once you start hating the terrorist it can spill over into hating innocents as well. Firstly, the same argument can be made against love, that once you embrace it you may end up loving the wrong people, like a husband or wife having an affair. Please. We discerning adults are plenty capable of controlling our emotions and directing them to legitimate targets. We hate Hamas for their honor killings of young girls with boyfriends or their murder of gays in Gaza without letting it spill over into hating the guy who stole our parking space.
Indeed, this is what Jesus himself meant. He never said to love G-d's enemies, but your enemies. G-d's enemies are the religious police in Saudi Arabia who allow young girls to burn alive in their high schools rather than run from the inferno without a face covering. Your enemy is the guy who got promoted over you at work.
Likewise, by turning the other cheek Jesus never meant that if Osama bin Laden blows up New York we should let him take Los Angeles as well. Rather, he meant that if you hear that someone you consider a friend said something unpleasant about you try and transcend the provocation. Any other understanding would make a mockery of one of the greatest moral teachers of all time.
Jesus hated the Romans for their cruelty and Luke (13:1-2) describes the brutality of the Roman proconsul Pilate, which Jesus uses as an illustration for his students. "Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?"
Indeed, if we don't begin to hate and fight evil, more victims will suffer and more innocents will die.
Shmuley Boteach, 'America's Rabbi,' is the author of 25 books, most recently 'Honoring the Child Spirit' and 'Renewal: A Guide to the Values-Filled Life.' He is about to publish a book on the Jewish Jesus and his fight against Rome. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Follow Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RabbiShmuley
Rev. Chuck Currie: Can Christians Support UN Intervention in Libya?
I'd say that you and the Christian Right ought to just get a room, but comedy's all in the timing, and that sounds like a done deal.
Definitions of 'Christian love' usually *do* end up justifying hate and excalating strife and injustice. This is obvious. I dunno if calling em 'mamby-pamby' about it is really going to help.
Anger can be powerful. *Hate* is poison. Civilization is... 'trust but verify.'
As a modern Pagan I do not represent a necessarily-pacifist religion. I *certainly* don't represent one that has to bend war around in circles to represent 'peace' and then try to 'sort it out by yanking on both sides into some knot of *hate.*
I've been called a warrior. And not just in metaphor. Sometimes, violence is necessary, but what I *do* know is that metal does not clear leather in a state of hate. Or no good can come of it. Not even tactically. Anger can be controlled, even *rage* can be channeled, but *hate?* Better to take the hits.
Nothing to do with rationalizing righteousness, or who's the victim here or *nothing.*
If you hate someone, they're inside your decision curve whether or not they even *know* it, and that's no state for loosing dangerous objects. Things tend to escalate.
I'll sing it for you, if you like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g5vm2mLb2c
'Maybe you're just not the Rabbi on this one.
I usually honor that title. But.
Dude.
How's that any different then patriotism? It's not, unless it is irrational to the point that it is willing to kill evilly and wantomly.
Patriotism in and of itself is not irrational, and when it is, it has crossed over to evil, not patriotism, no matter what the terrorists, Irish or otherwise might claim. They are evil men, not patriots.
This cry against patriotism is false, and I suspect quite cunning, especially by libertarians, and those who wish to not continue this Free Trade that is devastaing the worlds poorest countries, and now even the industrialized. Iow's, I don't buy it.
It would be nice to rid myself of the term, period, but I really, hate cilantro..........did I spell that correct? That said, I'll work on ridding myself of the term
Anyway, "hate" is a word to describe an intence emotion.
When I think of someone stabbing a 4 month old baby....................what do you want from me, "I dislike?" Yes, I am outraged, (intense word), regarding the stabbing death of a family by terrorists..... but a 4 month old baby? How could they hate so bad, as to do such a hateful thing?
I can't wrap my brain around it.
But I agree with you that "hate" is not a good word to use, and this is why........how could one hate so bad as to stab to death a family......and yes, a four month baby.
Evil. And that word I won't back down from. It was evil. Evil exists in the mind of a person where there is no light whatsoever, imo. Light exists outside, but evil refuses to recognize it.
I hope whoever did this recognizes that light and repents for their own sake.
How can people do that? Well, who know, but it does seem such atrocities are *part* of hate, not something hate can somehow stop.
Hatred is blind, and so, it seems, is fearing evil.
If you've heard the tale of what Hercules did that obligated him to perform those labors, someone messed up his head, put his kids in costumes and told him they were 'demons.' So in his madness, he slaughtered those innocents thinking *they* were 'evil creatures.' The twelve labors were done in atonement for this.
Sometimes, pointing and saying 'evil' is the *problem,* not the solution.
Amen. Gladys Knight sings that LA proved to much for the Man.........
One day when I was in Iraq, an insurgent came over the berm with a rocket launcher. I was about to shoot him, when a Marine shot him twice in the head. As he was falling he was staring right into my eyes. I'll never forget that look.
If I go back to Iraq or Afghanistan and another "enemy" is a threat to my life, or the life of my friends, I assure you, I will kill that person. But I will not hate him.
We shouldn't be about hate. We should do what must be done to protect our own. But it should be out of the love of that which is being saved, not out of hatred for that which we are killing.
Jesus loved everyone but fought against the Romans for their creulty and greed. Judas Iscariot betrayed him, but Jesus always loved him.
This is one of the major failings of Christian Churches. They limit their protestations of love to those close to them and others who think similarly. Other than that, they consistant show that they hate and despise those who oppose or disagree with them. This ultra-right form of thinking fits well with the corporate state envisioned by NEOCONs, but is an anathma to those who wish for freedom and love for all.
The entire mess rises from the hippie era of my youth. During those years, I knew more than one Deacon of a baptist church who made his money by operating as a loan shark (which was a profession which Jesus personally disliked strongly) and military chaplins who preached that killing "Zips" was a Christian act.
I also knew several Hippies (in the pre-LSD years, and they were invariably were good people (not always the cleanest) who south to understand the evil around them and help cure it.
Something in our culture almost died when Leary spoke about the "benefits" of taking LSD. It is starting to come out again, but the forces arrayed against it are even stronger.
I wish that I could do more than post comments on HP.
Matthew 5: 17 "Think not that I have come to destroy the laws and the prophets, I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill".
To fulfill something is to both fully fill and fully end something at the same time. A glass fully filled with water, fully fills and fully ends something at the same time. In the example of the glass fully filled with water, it fully ends the emptiness of the glass; the glass lacks emptiness.
Jesus is specifically speaking about two things in this verse; law and prophets. He has not come to destroy "law", for that would create chaos, nor has he come to destroy prophets because that would leave mankind without wise counsel, without Good spokesmen.
Jesus has come to end unjust law, and ill spoken prophets. Just as a fully filled glass of water lacks emptiness, irrational law lacks justice. Irrational law is a shame to both God and Man/Woman. Jesus didn't just target a specific group, religion, or nation, he specifically targeted irrational law, any and all irrational laws. Our religions, philosophies and governments to date have and continue to contain irrational and rational laws.
The founding fathers of the USA, for example, considered themselves enlightened, rational men, and yet they freely practiced and sanctioned slavery, knowing the brutality that existed in the practice. Was that rational? And if so how did they rationalize slavery in their minds? Philosophy and religions from both the Western and Eastern religions and philosophies. Karma and reincarnation would have supported slavery into perpetuity if rational men and women had not argued agaist it's irrationality and cruelty. Slavery preverted justice, and preverted the minds of rational men. Justice delayed, was justice denied for those millions caught in the web of deceit of karma and reincarnation because it sanctioned slavery.
It was through argument, and heated debate that mankind finally excised slavery from our midst along with many other evils.
Walking through scriptures is like walking through a mine field; some of us will actually seek justice, seek love, seek understanding, seek forgiveness and some of us will seek to validate our thirst for revenge, seek justification for our preversions.
That said, the debate must never end as long as men and women of ill will use scriptures to support and continue their assault against humanity.
It must not be because God said that mankind legislates laws against murder,or theft, but because rational men recognize that they are wrong, unjust, irrational. Separation of church and state must always exists, firmly, or we are in jeopardy.
However, one of the problems of modern Christianity is that it's congregations have dumbed down and cannot distinguish between the sinner and the sin, so they hate all.
They are people who live in fear - fear of death, fear of change, fear of scientific inquiry, fear of others of different races and religions, and fear that others will see them - and churches are outstanding at catering to these fears while they fan the flames of the hatred that arises from their preaching.
I have been to many churches, and the only established churches which I've gone to that made me feel good were black churches in central Georgia. Of course, those churches had to struggle against the terrorists who claimed to practice black magic and vodoo.
Also why it *never ends while you do that.*
Whatever the source or rationalization.
And here's a question for the day. We ask God for the right things. Why don't we ask Satan for elimination of the wrong things in addition?
:Interviewer: how many acts of Israeli massacre were perpetrated in 1948?
Twenty-four...There was also a great deal of arbitrary killing. Two old men are spotted walking in a field - they are shot. A woman is found in an abandoned village - she is shot. There are cases such as the village of Dawayima, in which a column entered the village..and killed anything that moved.
The worst cases were Saliha (70-80 killed), Deir Yassin (100-110), Lod (250), Dawayima (hundreds) and perhaps Abu Shusha (70). There is no unequivocal proof of a large-scale massacre at Tantura, but war crimes were perpetrated there. At Jaffa there was a massacre about which nothing had been known until now. The same at Arab al Muwassi, in the north...: at Safsaf, Saliha, Jish, Eilaboun, Arab al Muwasi, Deir al Asad, Majdal Krum, Sasa. In Operation Hiram there was a unusually high concentration of executions of people against a wall or next to a well in an orderly fashion.
...It’s a pattern. Apparently, various officers who took part in the operation understood that the expulsion order they received permitted them to do these deeds in order to encourage the population to take to the roads. The fact is that no one was punished for these acts of murder. Ben-Gurion silenced the matter. He covered up for the officers who did the massacres."
http://www.logosjournal.com/morris.htm
Knesset Passes Bill Prohibiting Nakba Commemoration
"The bill has been reworked since its proposal in May 2009; originally the bill authorized a three-year prison sentence for anyone seen commemorating the Nakba. Now it imposes a fine on any group or authority that hosts an event acknowledging the Palestinian Nakba."
http://english.pnn.ps/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=9757&Itemid=1
"Are you saying that Ben-Gurion was personally responsible for a deliberate and systematic policy of mass expulsion?
From April 1948, Ben-Gurion is projecting a message of transfer. There is no explicit order of his in writing, there is no orderly comprehensive policy, but there is an atmosphere of [population] transfer. The transfer idea is in the air. The entire leadership understands that this is the idea. The officer corps understands what is required of them. Under Ben-Gurion, a consensus of transfer is created.
Ben-Gurion was a “transferist”?
Of course. Ben-Gurion was a transferist. He understood that there could be no Jewish state with a large and hostile Arab minority in its midst. There would be no such state. It would not be able to exist.
I don’t hear you condemning him.
Ben-Gurion was right. If he had not done what he did, a state would not have come into being. That has to be clear. It is impossible to evade it. Without the uprooting of the Palestinians, a Jewish state would not have arisen here."
1) No person or nation is wholly "good" or "evil". "Hating evil" also means hating some amount of good.
2) People have different opinions of who is "evil". The 9/11 hijackers felt the US was "evil"; were they to be admired for "hating evil"?
Oh yes. They are admired by many people of the same ilk. And that proves precisely the rabbi's point
Though some might tell you otherwise. But look what they're selling along with it.
Rabbi Boteach, you seem to single out Palestinians, is Israel responsible for any evil?
"For instance: What about the Palestinian children of Area C? (Area C, for those witless innocents who have never heard of it, is not that part of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority, nor is it Gaza, for which Israel now claims no administrative responsibility other than blockading it. Instead it is that part of Palestine entirely occupied and controlled by Israel since 1967. ) According to a 2009 report by Save The Children U.K. called "Life on the Edge," the rate of malnutrition of the children in Area C is higher even than that in Gaza, and many kids are not only developmentally stunted, but are dying from related illnesses. "
http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/suffering-of-palestinian-children-is-something-both-sides-can-agree-on-1.314309
There is however, another force at work, and that's the misdirection or distortion of love. We love our power, influence and wealth far too much to stand up for what is right consistently. Only when people like Gaddafi and Hussein are perceived as threatening our wellbeing or opportunity do we start moralizing. In short, we love ourselves too much.