Not anymore, as I hear about the evil and violent actions people take on others, I shudder.
I remained naive that “good” people – those who believed in God – were somehow better, that their relationship with God would guide their steps and actions. They would see other human beings as that – human beings – and treat them as they would want to be treated. For Christians, this principle is indeed found in the Bible: “In all things…do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12).
But it seems that Christians, and others who have professed belief in God, have ignored this precept in far too many cases. I probably became aware of it throughout my youth when I saw some of my Christian friends being mean to others, but it came to a head when I read the story of one Sam Bowers .
Susan Smith
In the 1960s, Arbors was the imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and leader of the Mississippi White Knights, a secret division of the KKK. By the 1960s, the White Knights of Mississippi had more than 10,000 members. The FBI attributed nine murders and 300 beatings, arsons and bombings to this group led by Bowers. He was the mastermind behind the murders of three civil rights activists in 1964 – Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman – and led the group in the 1966 murder of Vernon Dahmer, a black man who helped register blacks on the electoral lists.
What struck me was that Bowers was a devout Christian. At the time I learned this, I did not know – and I did not know that there could be – a Christianity without Christ and without God. According to journalist Stuart Wexler, Bowers, along with many others, “adopted an atheistic ideology and renounced the grace of God.” Because of his Christless Christianity, he enveloped and adopted parts of the practice of Christianity with which he was familiar, including prayer and fasting, but he led people to pray and fast as they were preparing to carry out murderous raids against blacks in the South. .
Brutal violence perpetrated by humans who claim to follow God against other humans is not uncommon. From street murders to domestic violence to wars, humans murder and maim others while still professing belief in God. Spiritualist Howard Thurman, emphasizing the ferocity of hatred and violence perpetrated in war, wrote: “In war hatred becomes entirely respectable, even if it must be disguised under the guise of patriotism. »
“Brutal violence perpetrated by humans who claim to follow God against other humans is not uncommon. »
It’s because of human capacity feel and act based on the hatred that resides in the human mind and makes violence so common and brutal. I don’t understand how Europeans who said they loved God could commit genocide of non-white people on the lands they “discovered”. I cannot understand, once again, how clergy and faithful could brutalize the Congolese under the leadership of King Leopold II of Belgium without thinking about it, nor how the nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II are still considered acts of heroism. I also don’t understand how religious people seem to consider as a fact – as a fair fact, if the truth be told – the genocide of Native Americans in this country and the extermination of the Jews in Nazi Germany, and I don’t understand why the world believes it is okay for the Israeli government to destroy the Palestinians in masswhen it is Hamas that they seek to destroy following that group’s terrorist attack on innocent Israelis.
The number of people killed as a result of violence is staggering. An estimated 100,000 Native Americans were forced to walk the Trail of Tears, and approximately 15,000 of them died. Between 1500 and 1866, approximately 12.5 million Africans were transported from Africa to the Americas and approximately 1.8 million died during the Middle Passage. Approximately 6,500 Africans and African Americans died from lynchings between 1865 and 1950, and during the Civil War, 620,000 people were killed. During the First World War, 21 million people lost their lives, including 9 million military personnel. During World War II, 38 million people were killed and during the Vietnam War, 3.8 million.
I could go on, but the point has been made.
I can’t believe any of this is acceptable to God, yet God allows this to happen. In our creation, God apparently included a spiritual path to hatred and violence, a path that allowed us to think that hating and killing what God had created was acceptable. This means that our creation is or was imperfect – if we believe that our mission in life is to follow God. If God is okay with people circumventing the religion we are taught that says God is good and that God requires us to live in harmony with one another, then there is something wrong. We – or people like me – are looking for a God who doesn’t exist.
Please understand: I am not saying that the search for a God of community and love is the only way to practice religion, nor am I saying that anyone who seeks this kind of God succeeds in meeting this criterion at all. any time. We are failing miserably as humans. But it seems that belief in a God who denigrates evil and hatred of others and outright violence – including murder – is problematic. I long for divine intervention in which God would say to those who live in violence and hatred: “Enough! I long for a God who rests heavily on the shoulders and in the hearts of those who profess their belief.
God’s silence in light of the inhumanity we humans practice toward each other is troubling, especially since those who have no difficulty fighting against, stripping away rights, or murdering those whom they do not like for one reason or another, profess to believe in this God.
Sam Bowers prayed and fasted for his murderous lynch mobs; The people who stormed the Capitol building on January 6 stopped while in the building to raise holy hands and pray.
In the 18th century, Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” I would challenge Edwards and say that we are humans in the hands of a silent God, who permits the evil we are inclined to practice against each other.
Additionally, as I read and study the violence we perpetrate against others, I shudder. My God is silent and unavailable or unwilling to stop our destruction of one another – actions we take based on hatred or greed or lust for power or all of those issues.
Why this silence, my God? For what?
Susan K. Smith is an ordained minister, activist and author. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, she serves as director of clergy resource development for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. His latest book is With Liberty and Justice for Some: The Bible, the Constitution, and Racism in America.
