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Primitive religion is not believed, it is danced!

Arthur Darby Nock

Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
And only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.

Elizabeth Browning



Sunday, September 15, 2019

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
___________________________________________

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



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