Years ago I watched a documentary on this child born without arms or legs. His mother gave him up for adoption and another couple adopted him. This couple hated the fact that this poor kid was without arms or legs, so they set about providing a remedy. They got him prosthetics for his arms and he learned how to put them on with his teeth. They got him prosthetics for his legs and he learned how to put them on with his prosthetic arms. They taught him to feed himself and dress himself and the documentary showed him playing and laughing with his "better armed" siblings. He was a happy kid. But ... of course, we know he wasn't. Underneath the surface, this kid was born appendageless. (Yes, I just made that word up.) He wanted to be free of them because he wanted to be as he was born to be and these hateful adoptive parents just wouldn't let him. No, of course that's not true. He was grateful and all who saw it were grateful that these parents hated appendagelessness (Look! Another new word!) but loved the child who was without arms and legs enough to remedy it.
We can, as this documentary illustrates, understand the concept of hating a condition without hating the people in it. We can grasp the notion of hating "A" and seeking desperately, out of genuine concern, to rescue people caught in "A" by birth or by choice or by accident. You don't have to hate a person because they are in a condition you hate. We don't have to hate poor people just because they're poor. A caring person would want to end their poverty, not encourage them to flourish in it. Unfortunately, while we can understand that concept, too many operate without it. They despise Christianity (as an example) and, therefore, hate Christians. They hate transgenderism (another example) and, obviously, must hate people who present themselves as transgender. You get the idea. Why some of us do this isn't clear, and I suspect that's a rather complex answer, but that they do is equally clear.
I am quite transparent that I oppose the concepts of transgenderism or homosexuality or abortion, to name a few. It would be an absolute mistake to conclude I must hate people who present as trans or people who are in homosexual relationships or women who have had abortions. That would be completely false. But, for the same reason that some brain-dead people read that "80% of Evangelicals voted for Trump" in 2016 and concluded, therefore, that I must be a Trump lover, people assume that since I openly oppose those concepts, I must be a hater of those people. Absolutely not true. Conversely, I find that people who hate what I believe will routinely express hate to me without regard to the reality that everyone is an individual and, even when it comes to commonalities -- we're Christians or we're Republicans or we think science is quite clear that transgenderism is a lie, etc. -- we are all still individuals and, therefore, variable. Some hate the fact that I hate those things I listed and, therefore, choose to hate me, doing the same thing they accuse me of doing and hating about me. So think back to those adoptive parents who hated the concept of appendagelessness so much that they sought desperately to rescue a young boy born that way from it and try to think about the possibility that not everyone hates the sin and hates the sinner. Just a suggestion from one sinner to another.
2 comments:
I imagine we have such a hard time separating sins from sinners because of the volitional connection between sin and sinner. I'm not saying that it's correct to do so, but might be why it is so easy to do so. But when are we ever commanded to do the easy thing?
This reminds me of the child who was born just as a head--no body or limbs, just a head. Eventually he did grow a body and limbs and learned to walk, but one day while he was crossing the street he was run over and killed. The moral is: quit while you're a head.
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