Guest
Writer
The
spittle and foam of hate
Big
mouth on campus
by Steven
C. Benjamin
Here, on campus, a man speaks.
This is the Big U, center point to my completion
of a decade-old commitment the final reconciliation of
a teenage irresponsibility and decisions made at the ripe old
age of 20.
Here, in a location of no renown outside their presumably
liberal acceptance of the strange habits partaken through subculture
pursuits, a young man speaks, just due north of Kramer Hall.
This is a white male, certainly amounting to no
more than a full-score years himself, with a white polyester shirt,
a hand-held black leather copy of the New Testament (for some
reason the Catholics didnt see fit to use the noun in its
plural form), khaki trousers, a bit more baggy and shoddily hung
than I imagine his priest would prefer, and run-down, weather-beaten
two-year-old tennis shoes.
This model Christian, his jaw thumping and right
arm gesticulating toward the thinning congregation, showers every
ear provoked enough to try and listen with the spittle and foam
of hate.
It's a monstrous hate, a serious hate, the kind
of hate that gnaws at your soul. The world is filled with sinners,
and that's got this young man caught up in a real tizzy.
If asked what he hates, the answer will cautiously
remain at "sinners." But when asked to define sinners,
his tirade lambastes every form of American in existence not of
his own kind (those who keep their sins in the closet).
Jews, Jehovahs, Mormons, drug users, communists,
homosexuals no one who makes the most interesting aspects
of their life public is excepted from this boys imaginative
depictions of hellfire.
Interesting, I think, that he is brave enough to
shout declaratively, "I, like God, hate sinners," and
that "sinners" includes, say, homosexuals. But he will
not name, specifically, any particular homosexual; is even wary
to admit that, by logical deduction, he must hate them all as
God must hate every single one.
I had a dog as a boy. "Digger," I called
him. Digger was a homosexual by choice. Placed in a fenced yard
with gender options available for long enough, Digger could be
caught fully inserted in the back end of whatever other male dog
happened to be at hand. Perhaps it was because of his upbringing.
Hard to say, exactly. But, I wonder: does God hate Digger? Is
Digger roasting in hell? He was, after all, a sinner.
Why is it Christianity that breeds these children?
Ive never once seen a Buddhist screaming down divine wrath
from a podium or street corner. Muslims may be dicks to their
women, but they dont shout at them from center stage. Have
you ever seen a Koran thumper? Even the Jewish, who tend to prefer
an angrier Yahweh to the revisions of Jesus, do not send their
rabbis to incite hatred on otherwise semi-pleasant college campuses.
What is so unbearable about Christianity that it
must entail so violent a medium as proselytizing?
I wish I could say its because hes still
a boy, that hell calm with age and life-enforced wisdom.
But only a few months ago that podium was held by three men easily
into their 50s, easily as loud, and twice as angry.
What does Christianity teach to inspire this aggressive
martyrdom? Could it be the ultimate exclusivity? Everybodys
a sinner but us. Or perhaps the gratifying sense of revenge? Theyll
get theirs come Judgment Day eternity in hellfire. Or is
it simply that most Christians are idiots, and therefore tend
toward idiot children?
This last sounds like an unfair statement, but is
it really? How many other religions work with all their might
to limit education? How many other religions look so scornfully
on sophistication? Why is it the meek and stupid who shall inherit
the earth?
I find myself longing for an age when Christian
students can be relegated to Christian colleges. At the moment
I can think of no worse detriment to education and understanding
than that hypocritical ass on his soapbox shouting obscenities
at anyone brave enough to attempt having a mind of their own.