How do You Deal with Bigots?

How Do You Deal with Bigots?

Deuteronomy 32:34-36

Romans 12:17-19

            “The doctrine which, from the very first origin of religious dissensions, has been held by bigots of all sects, when condensed into a few words and stripped of rhetorical disguise is simply this:  I am in the right, and you are in the wrong.  When you are the stronger, you ought to tolerate me, for it is your duty to tolerate truth; but when I am the stronger, I shall persecute you, for it is my duty to persecute error.”-Thomas Babington Macaulay.

            Several years ago, our then-church secretary picked up a voice mail message.  The woman who left the message said something like, “I just wanted to tell you that your church is going to hell because you do not believe in God the way I do.  There!  Now I can sleep well tonight because I’ve delivered my message.”

            What prompts people to say things like that?  How can they be so rude?  How can they be so sure they are right and everyone else is wrong?  How do we respond to statements like this?

            I’ve thought about these and similar questions both before and after hearing this message.  I’m not sure I have all the answers, but I’ve come up with a few things that make sense to me.

            One of humanity’s biggest problems is insecurity.  We’re afraid things won’t work out for us, so we cling desperately to the little bit of truth we think we understand, and make it—for us—the whole truth.  Then, because we’re still insecure, we feel we must make it the truth for everyone.  This is especially damaging when it comes to religion, for the situation has eternal implications: “I must be right,” we say, “because if you’re right, then I must be wrong, and that means I’m the one who’s going to hell, and that can’t be!” 

            And so we argue over minute points of doctrine and individual words in Scripture, not allowing ourselves to realize that none of us have the whole truth, because each of us only understands a part of what the Bible—or, for that matter, sacred texts of any religion—means.  We’ll never understand everything until the whole truth is revealed to us, and that won’t happen in this lifetime.

            This is especially damning for Christians, who say our religion is based on a loving God.  The underlying theme of all Scripture is that God is love.  God loves the universe and everything in it—including all humans.  It must grieve God deeply to see us disagree so vehemently over what Scripture means, and to condemn others to eternal punishment because they do not agree with our interpretation.

            At root, we are all ignorant.  We don’t even know how much we don’t know.  This becomes especially dangerous when we achieve a position of power.  As Macaulay says, our inclination is to punish those who disagree with us because they must be in error.  As James Baldwin said, “Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.”

            This, at least for me, explains why people condemn others’ beliefs so rudely, and punish them—when given the opportunity—so violently.  But how can we respond to this anger and this rudeness?

 Leave it to God.

            Paul, in his letter to the Romans, quotes Moses’ words to the Israelites when he tells his listeners to remember that, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.  Paul also tells us to, so far as it depends on us, live peaceably with everyone.  Not easy to do, I admit, especially when they are attacking not just what we believe, but us.  But Paul is right.  Let God sort it out.