This Billboard Explains Why I am not a Church Goer

[McCamy Taylor]

In big letters on a major freeway:

"Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good."

If the pastor had started the quote with the usual first line---"Love must be sincere..."---then it would have been a message about love. But instead there is a great big message stretched out across the horizon telling us to "HATE"--at a time when too many of us are already toting guns and looking around for someone to hate on---permanently.

The last thing we need is Churches reinforcing the hate message. And the dualism of those two lines taken out of context are scary. How much are we supposed to hate what is evil? How far do we go to prop up what we are told is good?

This billboard has me so angry that if I happened to be a church goer, I would probably give up church for Lent.



Mystical experience is an important part of human life. So is faith. But thank the Founders we have laws to protect us against state sponsored religion.

[TomSlick]

1. Your last sentence is imminently correct.

The prohibition against the establishment of religion is vital to the Republic.

I have a hard time following your argument about the church sign. Surely, we all agree that we should hate evil and cling to what is good. The scripture passage (Romans 12, verse 9) does start with the sentence "Love must be sincere," but hating evil can't be a bad thing.

Neither the scripture nor the sign says to hate anyone. The admonition is to hate evil.

I see a lot of hate for Trump on DU. I am afraid of Trump. I am disgusted by Trump. But I'm a bit too concerned that he might be intellectually challenged to hate him. I do, however, hate the evil that Trump does.

[McCamy Taylor]

2. Hating "evil that" someone "does" (verb) is different from hating "evil" (noun).

As written on the billboard, it is "hate evil" (noun). Any time anyone tells you that any one, thing, person, place or noun is evil, expendable, wrong----that person has just committed the ultimate act of evil.

[MicaelS]

4. Bullshit.

Hitler was pure evil. So was Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and numerous others who slaughtered millions.

[McCamy Taylor]

6. Hilter and Stalin were products of their cultures and economies.

A lot of people acted together to enable the evil. Not all of them were Russian or German. The answer to the old question "Would you go back in time and kill baby Hitler if you could?" is "It would make no difference. The forces that made him would make someone else instead. Capital wanted fascism. It got fascism. Hitler was a tool of Capital."

When we identify a single person--or religion or race---as the cause of acts of evil, we then take the first step towards committing our own personal holocaust and a piece of our humanity dies.

No one, not even Hilter is evil. Hitler's actions were evil. There is absolutely no difference between calling a Nazi evil and calling an anonymous Black man evil or an anonymous Jewish man evil. The act of calling another human being "evil" is an act of violence towards another--and any act of violence towards another is an act of violence towards ourselves. You restrain or prevent the acts of violence--through use of lethal force if necessary. Any attempt to make the world a more perfect place by excising "evil" will cause a self perpetuating cycle of hatred, self hatred, violence and more violence.

This is why capital punishment is so dangerous. It teaches that there are some situations in which it is better for society that some people be erased. And since, as Americans, we all believe that our hearts are the best judge of right and wrong, sometimes we are tempted to act based on emotion rather than reason--and so, crimes of passion are committed that, in the heat of passion seem perfectly justified.

[TomSlick]

5. What you reported the sign as saying - and what the scripture passage says -

is "Hate what is evil." The translation from the Greek of the period to English is always problematic. I am not competent to talk to the Greek translation but the discussions I can find on line suggest that a better translation would be "abhor."

Neither the sign nor the passage say that any one, thing, person, etc. was evil. It simply says to abhor evil. By definition, evil is abhorrent.

I have seen a lot of posts on DU that have stated that Trump is evil or wrong. You surely don't believe these DUers have "committed the ultimate act of evil." Again, I don't personally use the word "hate" with reference to any person. People that do evil come and go, but the evil that men do lives after them.

[USALiberal]

3. Belief in any god is caused by how you are raised. Thus dozens of religions. nt

[McCamy Taylor]

7. The Florida shooting is exactly the kind of thing I pictured when I saw that disgusting

church billboard. It is why my flesh crawled. There have been so many shootings. And today there was another. And each time, the shooter has a grudge. He thinks he is taking out the trash. He thinks he is getting rid of the stuff he HATES. Getting rid off evil. When what he is really trying to get rid of is his self and his own pain that he can not acknowledge, because in this messed up country, men are not allowed to cry.

Imagine some mentally ill kid that self identifies as a Christian who has access to guns and who thinks that "evil" people have sinned against him. He drives by day after day and sees a sign on a Church that starts out with the word "Hate." The sign seems to order him to expunge the "evil." And so, being sick and unhappy and insane, he does it.

Can we please have more messages of Love, at least from our houses of worship?