HATING GOD

 

 

 

Hatred is often directed towards the things that are closest to us: Christianity and Western Civilization, the principles that had once made the West great.

 

Why? These provide the criteria by which we judge ourselves. If we feel judged - and to some degree all of us feel judged - we ordinarily hate the source of these judgments.

 

For instance, capitalism represents the demand that we succeed and the threat of failure, while Christianity represents the accusing finger which convicts us for failing to maintain its moral standards.

 

I too had been a hater. Consequently, I embraced the counter cultural and those who belonged to it.

 

Before Charles Manson had moved to LA, where collected his band of assassins who murdered on his behalf, he stayed with my roommate and I in Berkeley, California. Bob, my college roommate, had met Charlie on the Berkeley campus one night for an impromptu jam session. Bob played his guitar and Charlie found a can for his drum. At the end, Charlie asked Bob, “Do you have a place where I can crash?” We had a couch in our living room, and so Bob invited him back.

 

 Charlie was a talker, and we were glad to listen. He seemed to be quite “evolved,” so we thought he was cool. He talked about dropping acid and dancing with the energy of the surrounding trees, and killing cops, but that was what the “Woke” folks were also talking about, and so we enthusiastically listened. He never showed any interest in us or in what we were thinking, but why should he!

 

We never thought of him as a psychopath. One night, Bob slipped into my room to excitedly ask me, “Who does Charlie remind you of?” I told him I didn’t know. Bob continued, “Doesn’t he remind you of Jesus Christ?” Annoyed, I answered, “Bob, I’m Jewish, and Jesus doesn’t trigger any image for me.”

 

Why were we not able to see Charlie as the psychopath he evidently was? And how was his subsequent group of women, who accepted him as a Christ figure, unable to see the disconnect? We were possessed with the zeitgeist of the sixties, and the past and its lessons were no longer relevant for us. We were also driven by the pressures to conform to what we experienced as oppressive. Therefore, we were receptive to the approaching new age where love and peace would reign. We were ready to reject the ancient repressive restrictions of Christianity in favor of the Age of Aquarius and free love. The choice was easy.

 

Similarly, we can also ask how the cult leader, Jim Jones, had succeeded in luring almost 1000 idealists to commit suicide. And how was Adolph Hitler able to take control of the minds of a highly educated nation, perhaps the most educated nation in the world? He proved that even “education” is no defense against the insanity of our age.

 

The Manson girls had been in denial as they murdered their innocent victims. Is it possible that we too can be similarly blinded by our social context?

 

Even now, educated Westerners are celebrating Shariah Law, although it undermines the human rights that Westerners value, and seeks to even destroy the West, along with perhaps the most debunked and genocidal philosophy of Marxism. Why? They are the “counterculture,” which seeks to dismantle the West, its moral standards, and its “oppressive” moral judgments.

 

Why this auto-immune response? All systems make moral judgments, right, but we are more sensitive to the criticism of those things closest to us. Consequently, we feel more judged by our own society than by others and, consequently, seek to destroy it. No matter how benign our society might be, we are inclined to undermine and deconstruct its authority.

 

Christianity had provided the glue and rationale for the Western world. Destroy its rational basis and you dissolve the glue. Destroy its credibility, and you destroy the foundation, and now the West withers under the unrelenting attacks.

 

There are no perfect societies because there are no perfect people. We are the source of our own evil, which arises in every society and utopian experiment. However, it has always been more convenient to blame society than to blame ourselves.

 

Why? Because we feel judged and undermined by it, even though it has nurtured and protected us.

 

Not everyone feels this way. I no longer do. Why not? I no longer seek my society’s approval or feel condemned by it. Nor do I have to rebel against the influence of my parents. Why not? I have found a better source of validation in my Savior Jesus, who loves me so much that He died for me, even while I hated Him:

 

·       God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. (Romans 5:8–10)

 

 Jesus has bought and won my heart.