Um. . . . That’s Not Hatred

CHT to the reader who alerted me to the following story.

It seems that the Washington Nationals have suspended a volunteer chaplain for nodding his head in response to the wrong question.

The question was put to him by player Ryan Church, who was asking advice about his former girlfriend, who happens to be Jewish.

According to Church, he’s what happened:

"I said, like, Jewish people, they don’t believe in Jesus. Does that
mean they’re doomed? [Volunteer chaplain] Jon [Moeller] nodded, like, that’s what it meant. My
ex-girlfriend! I was like, man, if they only knew. Other religions
don’t know any better. It’s up to us to spread the word" [SOURCE].

Following this, the Washington Post got ahold of the story and published a front-page piece on it, following which Moeller was suspended as chaplain and Church issued an apology in which he distanced himself from "call[ing] into question the religious beliefs of others"–something that he apparently had just done!

The suspension and apology followed complaints from Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, and Orthodox rabbi in Washington. According to the WaPo story linked above, Rabbi Herzfeld stated that "the locker room of the Nationals is being used to preach hatred."

Elsewhere he is quoted as saying: "The Nationals did a good job about bringing hate into the locker room."

This might surprise some, but in principle I don’t have a problem with the Nationals suspending Chaplain Moeller. If they’re a private organization, they can have whatever kind of chaplain they want, including none at all. They also have the right to tell whatever chaplains they may have that "There are certain subjects we don’t want you to go into when you’re here; if you feel that you can minister to the players under these conditions, fine; otherwise, you’ll need to conduct your ministry elsewhere."

If the Nationals has such a policy and Chaplain Moeller was in violation of it then it is fair to suspend him. If they don’t have such a policy but are choosing to implement one now then Chaplain Moeller should have the policy explained to him and then he should be allowed to decide whether or not he feels he can minister under those conditions.

I do take exception to the remarks attributed to Rabbi Herzfeld, however. It is not "hatred" to propose a particular set of criteria for salvation and then conclude that those who do not meet those criteria are not saved. That’s a theological opinion, and it may be right or wrong, but it isn’t itself hatred.

Hatred might motivate it. A person might be drawn to a particular set of criteria because he hates a group and wishes to exclude them from salvation. But the mere fact that an individual concludes that some people aren’t saved is not itself evidence of hatred.

I don’t know how much experience Rabbi Herzfeld may have in talking with conservative Protestants, but there are a great many of them who are in no way motivated by hatred for the Jewish people, yet who believe that all Jewish people will be lost unless they accept Jesus as the Messiah.

The vast majority of them are not motivated by hatred in coming to this conclusion. They come to it because they sincerely believe in the necessity of Christian faith for salvation, and they happen to believe in a this necessity in an un-nuanced way that leads them to conclude that all who lack explicit Christian faith are unsaved.

That’s a theological opinion–one that I and my Church regard as inadequate–but it’s not an expression of hatred.

In fact, as evidenced by the somewhat inarticulate Mr. Church, it’s often serves as the occasion for showing love. Though human sinfulness can get in the way even here, it is in principle an act of love to share with someone what they need to be saved. It’s a spiritual work of mercy, and the belief that all non-Christians are doomed is often the occasion among conservative Protestants for renewed calls to reach out to them and share with them what they will need to be saved, for they are recognized as people who God loves and who he wants to save and who Jesus also died for. Conservative Proestants are regularly taught that people of other faiths are no better or worse than they themselves are and that all stand in need of God’s mercy.

I say all this as one who many conservative Protestants would not count as a Christian.

Many would regard me as automatically doomed because I am a Catholic. There is often even more antipathy toward Catholicism than toward Judaism in their circles because Catholics are believed to represent a false Christianity. By striking "closer to home" as it were, Catholicism is perceived as a much greater theological threat than Judaism.

But those conservative Protestants who believe that I am doomed because I am a Catholic don’t hate me.

They may disagree with and even loathe the faith to which I subscribe, but I’m not going to go around accusing them of "hate" just because they think I don’t qualify for salvation as they understand its terms.

There are far too many false accusations of hatred and "hate speech," and they have contributed to the development of a culture of victimization that threatens the fabric of American society.

Fundamentally, it is a disservice to the truth and to society to go around proclaiming "Hate! Hate!" where there is no hate.