Last fall, Herman Cain said we should have an electrical fence at our border, so that anyone trying to cross would be electrocuted and killed. He later said it wasn't a serious plan to deal with immigration problems; it was a joke. Really? Because I don't think it's funny at all. Last week we had Charles Worley, a North Carolina minister, saying that gay people should be confined to an area surrounded by an electric fence. A concentration camp, apparently. It wasn't that long ago that we did have interment camps in our country for the Japanese, during World War II. We still have people alive today who were in concentration camps set up by Adolf Hitler. Unlike Cain, Worley has not said he was joking.
Cain and Worley have more in common than electric fences. They are both Baptists. While there are some very nice people who are Baptists, the collective arrogance of a group of people who believe they have a personal relationship with the son of god boggles the mind. And while many would not be so stupid as to publicly state what Worley said, make no mistake, many would silently agree with him. There is a very real hatred of gays among this group. I know. I used to be a Baptist myself. I was employed as a church secretary and I got a unique view from the inside that the average person in the pew never gets.
Some wonder how people who profess to follow Jesus, who say they love god, could be so cruel.The problem begins with their view of god. The Baptist religion is a weird mixture of Old and New Testament scripture, with verses taken out of context and completely twisted to serve their own purposes. Their god is not at all like the healer Jesus, the loving Jesus of the gospels. They downplay him and play up the judgemental god of the Old Testament. They believe in a literal hell, an actual place of fire and brimstone, a lake of fire, where unbelievers are tortured forever. Their heavenly father is the ultimate abusive parent, and they emulate him.
If you ask them if god loves gay people, they would say yes, god loves everyone, but he hates sin, and homosexuality is a sin, an abomination, a perversion. They say "love the sinner but hate the sin," but in reality they are all about the hatred. Now not everyone who attends a Baptist church is like this; it is a collective belief and a very real part of the clergy. Not everyone is a hater, but the official stance is that homosexuality is a sin.
The reason they are arrogant is because they think they know the mind of god. They have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, you see. They have a book that they purport to be the inspired, literal word of god (Worley's church goes so far as to say that only the King James Version from 1611 is inspired.) Not a book about god written by men, but a book breathed by god and penned by men. They are saved. Those who don't believe as they do are lost.
I watched the video of Worley, and he's not at all a good speaker. But some men (women are not permitted to be ministers) in this group are very smooth, very persuasive and very charismatic. It's easy, once you have people believing, to get them to act. While it might be tempting to laugh it off and think that people who make comments like Cain and Worley are just idiots, because to thinking people it sounds so absurd. But some people actually believe the absurdities, so we are just one small step away from the atrocities.
Susan
"Personal Jesus" written by Martin Gore
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