Cycles of violence … Who hates God?
Exodus 20:5
Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor
serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of
the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that
hate me;
Who hates God?
The easy answer that comes to mind might be atheists. But, of course, a true atheist doesn’t
believe in the existence of God – how can someone hate something that doesn’t
exist? Satanists are another group of
people that we could point to and say that they hate God. Certainly with their creed, their words and
their rituals, they seek to align themselves with the mystical enemy of God and
eschew all things upright and wholesome.
But… I would wager that most Satanists in action, in the world and in
their families, are no less destructive and unwholesome than some who profess
to believe in God. Oh, there are
certainly Satanists who choose evil deeds, who hate and curse and torture and
kill. But, are there not God believing
people who do the same, calling on a different name?
How many Muslims, how many Christians, how many
peoples throughout history around the world have preached and practiced acts of
violence and cruelty in the name of their gods?
Enough to make a person think about wanting to be an atheist – indeed,
some want-to-be influential people, like Bill Maher, for one example, blame all
the wars that humans have fought on religion.
However, in all truth and reason, we can clearly see that wars arise
from ideologies – which often claim
no god. Stalin’s communist regime was
one of the most brutal in history and he did not systematically kill for the
honor of any god, for he was an atheist.
He was vicious and destructive for himself, for power and greed (maybe
even for his own amusement) for the sake of his way of looking at things, his ideology. And is that not the true cause of every
war? Is not the real reason humans are
bent on cruelty and domination that they want
to be? Wars are fought by individual
soldiers in trenches and on front lines who may very well have loving reasons
for being there – but wars are instigated and created by people who want what
they want and will gladly have killed or destroyed anyone who they think gets
in the way. Even smaller-scale acts of
violence – the cold-blooded murder of a girlfriend, the rape of a stranger, the
lethal shooting of a dozen kids in a school – are not caused by religion. Man’s cruelty to man has nothing to do with
the love and worship of God.
The people who hate God are the people who hate
other people. For every person is
created in God’s image. If you hate
anyone in the world – even if you hate the most horrible and vilest of persons
– you hate God. We often think that it
is right and good to hate evil doers. We
laud all talk of destroying the enemies of freedom and justice. Although it is true that anyone who is an
enemy of true freedom and true justice is choosing to go against the ways of
God, if we choose to hate that hate-filled person, then we, too, are choosing
to go against God’s ways. Christ said, “You have heard
that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your
enemy.' But I say to you, Love
your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so
that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise
on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on
the unjust.” God does not close off
divine mercy from anyone – and neither should we. For, if we are to live as we were created to
live, we must strive to do as God does and struggle to walk in the ways of
mercy and selflessness – of real love.
Yes, people do horrendous things and claim to do
them for the love of God – but that’s not really love. Or, perhaps more accurately, that’s not
really God. It’s very easy to think of
God as meting out pain and vicious punishment on those who would seek to go
against Him. The Bible has many, many verses
that tell of God’s wrath and vengeance and the hurt He puts upon His enemies. In the verse from Exodus 20, about the Commandment
against worshiping false idols God says, “I, the LORD your God, am a jealous
God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth
generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand [generations] of those who love me and keep my commandments.” What we often think of as God’s willfully wrathful
punishment, however, is, I believe, simply the natural consequences of our own
willfully wrathful choices. Do we not
know that violence begets violence and those who live by the sword die by the
sword? Do we not see the rational truth
of this in the world, even in our everyday lives? It doesn’t mean that the One and Almighty God
will smite anyone who seeks to worship through a religion other than the one
and only one prescribed by Him. If it
did, God might welcome arguments that escalate into violence about which
religion is the true religion – but, God “makes his sun rise on the evil and on
the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” God gives us freewill and allows us to freely
choose, pouring His love and mercy upon each and every one of us,
relentlessly. That loving mercy can feel
like eternal pain to those who never want to receive it, not even in the last
moments of their lives; or it can feel like eternal sunshine and grace to those
who long for the forgiveness and love of God.
If a child is taught to hate by his parents, he
will usually become a hater. If his
child, then, is taught to destroy the hated ones, then he will usually become
destructive. The person in the family
who first chose, in freewill, to hate a human being or human beings, who first
saw cruel domination as a good, set up a cycle of hate, a cycle of violence,
that is, as we know, very difficult to break.
But, then, there are those people who willfully choose to have
mercy. Though, sometimes, they are
punished by the hating people, their acts of kindness and selflessness do not
go unseen. Their true love, that choice
to walk in divine ways, inspires others for generations upon generations upon
generations… as are the saints of old, and new, ever inspiring, ever celebrated
even after 2000, 5000 years. And their
individual lives do not end with the death of their limited bodies, their self-centered
thinking, as do the lives of those who hate God by hating human beings – the
lives of those who love God by selflessly loving human beings are as eternally beautiful
as the Beautiful One, Who Is Eternal Love.
Christina Chase
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