The sin of indifference

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”

                                                                         Elie Wiesel

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I remember, many years ago

Listening to a record (yes, vinyl) by Tom Lehrer

On that album of songs, full of sarcasm and irony

Was a song titled “National Brotherhood Week”

Lehrer introduces the song with a soliloquy

Which ends this way

“I'm sure we all agree that we ought to love one another,

and I know there are people in the world who do not love

their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that!

Here's a song about National Brotherhood Week:”

I don’t know about you, but I have a conflicted relationship with hate

I don’t like it

I don’t like it when it rises up inside my soul

And roars

Sometimes I feel as if I should not have these feelings

(although I expect hate, like every other feeling, is just a human experience)

Sometimes others tell me I should not have these feelings

And chide me, and shame me

Questioning my spirituality

And yet, it is clear that there are things God hates

The prophet Amos, speaking for God, says

“I hate, I despise your festivals,

    and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.

Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings,

    I will not accept them;

and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals

    I will not look upon.

take away from me the noise of your songs;

    I will not listen to the melody of your harps.”

Ouch

Notice.  God does not say, “I hate you”

But God does say “I hate what you are doing”

(Side Note:  There’s a difference, between hating the action and the person,

but it’s a tricky one.

We can separate the person from the action. 

But we have to be careful we don’t consider things choices we can “hate”

that aren’t really choices… such as sexual orientation.  And it gets even more problematic when we start to think about how/why a person thinks, and acts, the way her or she does)

Amos not only suggests that God hates what is fundamentally hypocrisy

People going through the motions of worshiping

While at the same time neglecting the poor

Perpetrating injustice

And worse

He suggests that God’s people also ought to

“hate” those things too

Those things that are not good

Those things that damage other people,

Vulnerable people

That God’s people are to hate those things

that hurt people who are poor

Or old

Or ill

Or minorities

Or strangers (immigrants)

And clearly, if we fail to “hate” certain things

It is a problem.

As Wiesel so brilliantly notes, “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference.”

Our hating things that are damaging and destructive

Our hating things that are killing our planet

Our hating injustice and inequity

Our hating children in cages

Our hating unjust policies

And graft and greed in high places

Is not the opposite of love

It is our fighting for love

To allow those things to be

To watch as evil eats away at people’s hope

To watch as evil refuses to protect the vulnerable

To watch as people are destroyed

That is the opposite of love