Love and Hate

In response to my posting on negative perceptions of evangelical Christians, this comment was left by Anonymous:

I don't think anyone can deny that while evangelicals preach love, they are more prone to hate. Especially anything that falls outside of their beliefs, which given how backward many of them are, is a ton! I respect all religions and know that there are good evangelicals out there, I just haven't met any. Having lived in Georgia, I have been told that eating ethic food such as Lebanese or Indian is against the will of God, that yoga is spiritually dangerous, that Harry Potter fosters witchcraft. For among these reasons, while I respect all religions, I can't respect a religion that hates so much and denies science and hates anything it considers outside. Their message on Homosexuals is completey against their message of love, and their repression of women through their beliefs on contraception is rediculous and backwards. Their hating has turned me into a hater 

Clearly this person has bad feelings about experiences with evangelicals. I have no doubt that Christians have some amount of blame in that. We are called to give a reason for the hope that we have with gentleness and respect, and we don't always do things that way.

I want to take a closer look at the comment.

When the Sideshow Takes the Center Ring

As someone who believes in the rule of law and equal application of the law, it saddens me to see some situations devolve into a bad circus sideshow, where the truth gets buried underneath people playing to the cameras, talking heads yelling about something they did not witness as though they did, and professional attention-seekers doing what is best for their personal agenda, regardless of the harm it does to the actual victim or community.