Love, and Reject Hate
This is an article I wrote for a local newspaper for a column by local pastors.
I feel
that I must address the protest by white nationalists, white supremacists and
Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia this past weekend.
They
began on Friday night by surrounding a church where clergy and community
leaders gathered in prayer before preparing to be a counter-protest the next
day. Outside of the church, the crowd chanted Nazi slogans and threatened
violence.
On
Saturday, clergy and members of their church gathered in the park where the
protest was to go, and sang hymns. The protesters came because a statue of a
Confederate general was being removed. The community had decided that it was a
symbol of hate and division, and should come down.
After
their rally, many of the white supremacists used the clubs and shields they
brought with them to beat on those who came out to speak against their protest.
One extremist drove his car into a group of other cars, killing at least one
person, and injuring dozens of others.
I salute
my fellow members of the clergy who put themselves in harm’s way to protest
hate.
My
tradition and denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, approved a social statement on
racism several years ago. It defines racism as: “a mix of power, privilege, and prejudice. (It) is sin, a violation of
God’s intention for humanity. The resulting racial, ethnic, or cultural
barriers deny the truth that all people are God’s creatures and, therefore,
persons of dignity. Racism fractures and fragments both church and society.”
To be in Christ, to be a member
of the body of Christ, to follow what Christ has commanded means that we are to
love. Scripture, time after time, calls us to love; to love the Lord our God,
to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength, to love our
neighbor, to love one another, to love the foreigner or stranger (Leviticus
19:33-34), to love our enemies.
The
command to love trumps all other commands.
God
wants us, calls us, commands us to love all of what God has created for our
benefit. To not love, to hate is to reject the will of God. And to not point
out and condemn that hate only feeds the fuel of that hatred.
By the
will and command of God, love trumps hate.
When
that hate takes the form of using the defeated and disgraced flags, slogans,
mottos and actions of the confederacy and Nazi Germany, it is easy to reject
and refute. Or it should be. When it takes the form of subtle prejudices,
comments, and biases, it should be just as easy to reject and refute, especially
if it is being done by those close to you.
None of
us would hesitate to warn someone that the oven is hot. None of us would
hesitate to warn someone of danger.
Then why
do most of us refuse to speak up when people are sowing the seeds of hatred?
Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, a German Lutheran Pastor, who died fighting the Nazi movement in
his country wrote, “We are not to simply
bandage the wounds of the victims beneath the wheel of injustice. We are to
drive a spoke into the wheel itself.”
Following
Christ means doing what he did, doing what he told us to do. He told us to
love. He told us to reject hate.
Will you
reject racism? Or will you reject God?
Pastor
Brian Robert Campbell
ONE
in Christ Lutheran Parish
Our
Savior’s + Greenwood; Nazareth + Withee, Emmanuel + Longwood
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