Looking over the comment section under E.J. Dionne's column today in the Post on fear and bigotry and "Christianity," I'm seeing a familiar, six-word phrase repeated by countless commenters. It's a familiar, easily-memorized motto known to nearly every self-professed Christian American: "Hate the sin, love the sinner."
Might be the other way 'round, but the symmetry remains.
Easily memorized but pretty hard to understand, at least for an old apostate like myself. Just knowing it and being able to repeat it seems to excuse a broad spectrum of behavior that looks nothing like any love I've seen.
I love you, but I'm going to fight as hard as I can to keep you from settling down and trying to build a life with the person you love.
I'm going to work to make the very essence of your corporal life a crime again, the way it was meant to be, so that you will never be able to love without fear.
I'm going to teach my children that you are to be shunned and feared and never trusted.
I'm going to fight for the right to hound you from your job and keep you from the neighborhood where you want to live.
I'm going to think up ever-more clever slurs for you.
I'm going to do everything I can to remind you that you're not a real person, that you're at best a twisted, evil abomination, a grievous mistake.
Made by a loving god who doesn't make mistakes. He can't. Because he loves us all.
Just like me.