Turn! Turn! Turn! (to Everything There Is A Season)

A Time to Hate
Using a bereaved husband's reaction to the death sentence handed earlier this week to the man who raped and murdered the husband's wife and daughters, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach passes on an important lesson that many of us have forgotten: As it says in Ecclesiastes (Koheleth), there's a time to hate.

Over the past few years many of us have lost our moral bearings on the subject of evil and human suffering. Many of my Christian brothers and sisters take Jesus' teachings about forgiving our enemies completely out of context. Jesus said to forgive your enemies. Your enemy is the guy who steals your parking space. But God's enemies are men who can rape and slaughter two young women and their mother and torture them before doing so. In Ecclesiastes King Solomon famously says "there is a time to love and a time to hate." This is that time. We must love the Petit family and hate their murderers. Yes, hatred is a valid emotion when directed at the truly evil.

No, I do not believe in revenge. I believe in justice. But only a true hatred of evil compels us to fight wickedness with every legitimate means at our disposal.

When I lived in England during some of the worst years of the Northern Ireland troubles I once heard a man whose father was killed by the IRA for no reason other than he was a Protestant immediately say that as a Christian he is compelled to love his father's murderers. He said he forgave them for killing his father. But no human being, even the man's son, can confer such forgiveness. The act of taking a human life is a crime against God who created life and endowed it with infinite worth. And such acts of misguided magnanimity and forgiveness make a mockery of human love and a shambles of human justice. Murder in cold blood dare not be forgiven. Murderers who have erased the image of God from their countenance through savage acts of brutality have removed themselves from the human family. They are not our brothers and we are under no obligation to love them. Indeed, any love we have in our hearts must be directed at the victims of violence rather than at their culprits.

Yes, Jesus said 'turn the other cheek.' But is anyone so morally lost as to suggest that he meant if someone rapes your wife, give him your daughter to rape as well? Of course, what Jesus meant was to forgive the petty slights that people enact against you. If a friend pretends not to notice you at a party, forgive them. If your husband loses his temper and yells, yes he must apologize. But be quick to forgive. But Jesus never meant that we should not dedicate ourselves to fighting evil.

Psalm 97 makes it clear. "Let those who love the Lord hate evil." It's repeated again in Proverbs Chap 8: "The fear of the Lord is to hate evil." Yes, hatred has its place, but only under a single condition that was met in the terrible Petit murders: the human confrontation with extreme evil.

I believe there's an important lesson here for Israelis and how we relate to 'Palestinian' terror. There's nothing wrong with hating the terrorists and those who support them. They are extreme evil.

Hate and Slander for Profit

Introduction

BY DAN AMATO


In August, 2009 the Southern Poverty Law Center released a "Special Report" entitled "The Second Wave: Return of the Militias". In this completely fabricated conspiracy theory of a report, Mark Potok, Larry Keller and David Holthouse continue to point their fingers at legitimate American Citizens of this country - who have real concerns - and call them racists and hate-mongers.

In this "Special Report" of my own entitled "Hate and Slander for Profit: Dissecting the Southern Poverty Law Center Report" I intend to set the record straight on this piece of race-card playing, pile of lies that the SPLC continues to perpetuate in order to justify their existence.

If you have a second-grader handy, you could probably write a similar report as the SPLC has done and peddle it around as real journalism to all of the mainstream media outlets. They scarf this race dividing and hateful garbage up - and hey - they love a good conspiracy theory. They might even get some gullible, useful idiots to donate money to you thinking you're doing something good for this country and its people.

I urge all of you who are reading this to pass it on to your friends. The activities of the SPLC must be exposed for what they are. You can download a printable PDF of this full report here to hand out or spread around.

For ease of distribution you can use these links in e-mails and for fliers:
Direct link to PDF file: http://www.diggersrealm.com/hateandslander
Direct link to HTML file: http://www.diggersrealm.com/hsfp

Dan Amato
August 13, 2009


Continue To Part One


Hate And Slander For Profit:
PDF of Full Report - Introduction - Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

This entry is in the following archive(s):

* Hate And Slander For Profit Report
* Immigration
* Politics
* Southern Poverty Law Center

Next and Previous Entries:

* Being Called An Extremist Or Racist Shouldn't Silence You
* Hate And Slander For Profit - Part 1

Posted by Digger on August 15, 2009 12:00 AM (Permalink)
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