Hate the sinner

Religion and Secularism
1

I’m a big Nicholas Kristof fan, partly because he challenges me sometimes.]But this week I totally disagreed with him when he defended evangelicals in general because some of them are tireless volunteers. So I posted this on Facebook with this comment:

• Kristof has been known to miss the boat. Here, he tells liberals not to be prejudice against evangelicals, then he tells us to be bias toward all of them because a few of them make huge sacrifices. Kristof goes into some of the worst places in the world and sees the worst of humanity. I'm sure he notices evangelical groups working in those places too. What he misses is, I would never mock someone for doing that kind of work. I would mock them for believing that God says to hate homosexuals.
My uncle, who is no slouch, he was a VP of finance at a fortune 500 corporation, said;
, I don't know any Christian that believes God says to hate homosexuals, or murderers, or thieves, or - you name the sin. God loves us all and would have his children love all.
Which completely misses the point that SOME PEOPLE believe God told them something. This is not some hot headed firebrand, he is quite mild mannered, BTW. He took it further, saying accusations of hate are perpetuated by the news media. So, you can see where it's going. I tried to interrupt that by saying, "What I don't get is why you don't see how we agree. We agree hate is wrong. We agree justifying hate and punishment using religion is wrong. But instead of addressing that wrong, you want to argue with me about what sin is or whether or not discrimination is real." He followed up with a convoluted paragraph about my judging people and how he's sure those Christians don't really hate. Then his son got involved and started abusing logic like he always does. So, other than "they'll never listen", can anyone see anything wrong with my attempt to find agreement?
2

Ask them careful and precise questions and don’t react to the answers. Let the questions lead them to view aspects of things they are obviously ignoring. But, don’t tell them the right answer or try to correct the ones they give you. Just expose the fly in the ointment and let the chips fall where they may. They may say awful things but that will demonstrate how they are behaving in contrast to how you are behaving. If you don’t react to their zingers, they may reflect on how they answered later. And if they are actually trying to be honest and reasonable, they may revisit the questions you asked and upon reflection, find something they didn’t see before. But it is a slow process and takes patience and time. If they are incapable of examining their answers and only seem to enjoy lobbing verbal bombs your way, you are wasting your time.
Agreement is not the goal. Open and respectful discussion and exploration of the topic is the goal.

3

Thanks Dan, that sounds like something I would say, but sometimes it’s hard to hear your own advice.