Skip to main content

More on Hatred

And forgiveness Pat Buchanan wrote to Jeff Jacoby and defended President Bush for asking God to forgive Yasser Arafat. Jacoby had criticized the president for doing so. He says of the incident:
[M]any readers defended Bush's reaction. One of them was Pat Buchanan, who replied to my column in one of his own. He began with a jab at the presumption of "columnists who know the mind of God." Then he wrote: "In defense of President Bush, if that was his first reaction to Arafat's death, it bespeaks a Christian heart. As a boy in World War II, I was taught by Catholic nuns that while permissible to pray for the death of Hitler or Tojo, it was impermissible to pray for their damnation. That was hatred, and hatred is a sin."
Buchanan is undoubtedly voicing the Catholic response, which often scandalizes those not familiar with it. It is not unique to Catholics, however, most people who have at least some Christian scruples are familiar with it. Jacoby, however, is Jewish, and he shares with us another point of view:
Jewish tradition holds, with Ecclesiastes, that there is a time to love and a time to hate. The Hebrew Bible enjoins us to love our neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and to love the stranger (Deuteronomy 10:19), but that love has its limits. We are not expected to love savage thugs or to ask God's mercy on them. On the contrary, we loathe the unrepentantly cruel because we believe God loathes them too. It defies reason and upends morality to claim that God loves both Saddam Hussein and the innocent Kurds he gassed to death -- that He bestows His love on Osama bin Laden no less than on the 3,000 souls he butchered on 9/11. Of course we should pray that an evildoer will realize the awfulness of his ways and atone for his crimes. But to love him even if he doesn't? To bless him when he dies? God forbid! To bless the Hitlers and the Arafats of this world is to betray their victims. That we must never do.
It will shock no one if I say that I find the actions of mass murderers abhorrent. But I disagree with Jacoby when he says we should not pray for such a person if they do not repent. It is impossible to know what is going on in another person's mind. It is a mistake to assume they operate under the same constraints as the rest of us. They may be like child born with only nine fingers, except that their missing finger is all or part of the conscience. And it really is presumptuous to assume that we know what God thinks of the matter. What about the victims though? Is Jacoby right to say that to forgive the killer is to betray the victim? This line of the thought is too obsessed with the here and now on earth, when the ultimate goal of our lives to union with God. The victims, united with God, will understand God's reasons, and I doubt very much that they will have much if any concern for how we treat the aggressor. Lashing out at the killer is very much about us, here and now. Were we to follow Jacoby, we would be using the dead to justify our anger, and our need for revenge, whose source is Pride.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reuters joins CNN on the bench

Makes room for CanWest to join the majors Kudos to CanWest for calling a terrorist a terrorist . Many, including The Last Amazon , will be happy to hear it. Reuters is among the worst of the major western news services, where I would also place the BBC and the CBC. Unsurprisingly, Reuters is not happy about the changes CanWest made to Reuters wire stories: Our editorial policy is that we don't use emotive words when labeling someone," said David A. Schlesinger, Reuters' global managing editor. "Any paper can change copy and do whatever they want. But if a paper wants to change our copy that way, we would be more comfortable if they remove the byline." Mr. Schlesinger said he was concerned that changes like those made at CanWest could lead to "confusion" about what Reuters is reporting and possibly endanger its reporters in volatile areas or situations. "My goal is to protect

Where credit is due

A good'un from Sawyer Brown . Thank God for You Well I've been called a self-made man Girl don't you believe it's true I know exactly how lucky I am When I'm gettin' this close to you It's high time I'm giving some praise To those that got me where I am today Chorus I got to thank momma for the cookin' Daddy for the whuppin' The devil for the trouble that I get into I got to give credit where credit is due I thank the bank for the money Thank God for you A strong heart and a willing hand That's the secret to my success A good woman - I try to be a good man A good job - Lord I know I've been blessed I'm just a part of a greater plan It doesn't matter which part I am Chorus I got to thank momma for the teachin' Daddy for the preachin' The devil for the trouble that I get into I got to give credit where credit is due I thank the bank for the money Thank God for you

A very limited form of inquiry

Real Clear Politics is carrying commentary on James Q. Wilson's WSJ article on ID (got that?). Wilson, the respected social scientist, gets it mostly right when he says that ID is not science because it can't be tested: So ID is not science. Does this mean that science, in any way, implies the non-existence of God? No. Does this mean that belief in God is irrational and that we should all be "free thinkers"? No. Does this mean that it is impossible to arbitrate between various theories of the existence/non-existence of God and come to some reasonable conclusions? No. Does this mean that we cannot say that humanity is meant to exist? No. In other words, rationality outside of science is quite possible, and has been around for a long time. How do you think humanity invented science in the first place? We surely did not do it scientifically. Science as we know it is the product of millennia of philosophical debate -- from Aristotle to Lakatos. Science depends upon phi