How does a person overcome one's hatred towards "Christians"?

Someone asked in Yahoo Answers this question:

"How do I overcome my hatred towards Christians?
Two years ago I met God. He turned my life around. He helped me grow, He helped me mend seemingly un-mendable relationships. Last summer I was supposed to be a counselor/TA at a Christian summer camp. The application told me to write down what I was passionate about. I said that I am passionate about marriage equality, helping teenage drug addicts, being a part of stopping sexual trafficking, and treating animals with the same respect I treat humans with. I was basically "kindly asked to leave" because I supported marriage equality and thought that the lives of animals are worth just as much as humans. It has been several months and I still cannot overcome this anger and hatred that boils up inside of me when I see anything Christian. Right now at school I am learning about Christianity and just reading about it disgusts me beyond belief. I don't want to hate Christians but I don't know how to overcome this anger within me. Please help."

 Below is an excerpt of my answer.

"I am sorry to know about the unkind treatment you received from the Christian organisation for stating your beliefs that differ from theirs. I have had my fair share of being treated unkindly by some church members for believing differently from their mainstream church doctrines/teachings. I am no longer attending any church services today.

I have come to learn that it is okay to feel angry at them. Acknowledging our anger and hatred towards them for mistreating us (instead of suppressing our emotions) is actually a step towards finding healing and ensuring our emotions do not control us in the long run.

I would say our anger is directed not so much at Christians as it is towards what they represent. Some are more open-minded and gracious than others, and it so happened we have encountered the more close-minded ones. I can understand that having been hurt by them, anything that is associated with Christianity would leave a bad taste in your mouth, and you would naturally want to stay away from it as far as you can.

At a deeper level, I personally would want to see everyone as human beings, whether they call themselves Christians or otherwise, as I have come to see that Christianity is only a belief system like all other belief systems. One man's orthodoxy is another man's heresy, as the saying goes. Our beliefs about God are ultimately personal and subjective. I think this view helps me to see them from a bigger perspective and realise that the way the adherents in a particular religion treats others is mostly a result of incessant indoctrination by their system, and they were only projecting the bias and prejudices they have been taught onto us who were unfortunate enough to be in their presence at that time.

In the meantime, in order to overcome your hatred towards them, I think writing your thoughts in a journal or blog helps. Even as I am sharing my thoughts in my answer, I am helping myself to articulate my thoughts regarding Christianity at this point of my journey in life. Talking with trusted friends helps too, as we all need support and safe outlets to ventilate our thoughts and emotions."

Emotions and Stillness

There is a place for expressing anger and bitterness. Each of us has to find our own balance to not allow these valid emotions to run our lives or affect our health and well being or cause harm to others, while at the same time, to express these emotions freely as long as we need to, in order to find greater freedom in future.

Suppressing our emotions would mean denying our humanity and thus causing resentment to fester over time. To experience healing from abuse and manipulation by society and religion, we all need safe ways to ventilate and express our emotions. Being in a community of fellow survivors where people support one another instead of trying to fix one another is one such way, and is a step towards finding healing. One such community I have visited and can recommend is David Hayward's forum.

Being still and finding time to meditate on life's experiences is another safe way of dealing with anger and bitterness. It involves accepting all our emotions wholeheartedly without making any value judgment on whether they are right or wrong. By accepting our humanity, we give ourselves permission to feel what we need to feel, and eventually heal from the inside out.

I am learning that compassion involves being involved in another person's suffering too. In order to empathise with others, we need to stay in touch with our feelings first and not deny our feelings. Being human, no one is immune to feelings of hurt and abuse, and we all have the capacity to put ourselves in the shoes of another, and show sensitivity and understanding.

On a similar note, I think the verse "Be still and know I am God" can mean be still and know I am love; I am peace; I am non judgement; I am one with others, both in joy and in sorrow, both in bliss and in suffering. Feelings are that which makes us human and unites us as one humanity. Contrary to popular belief, expressing feelings does not make us look weak because it can forge a stronger bond between people who share similar challenges and support one another with compassion and understanding.

What does it mean to be "spiritual but not religious"?

I have listened to Rob Bell's video on "Rediscovering Wonder" again, and somewhere in the middle of the video, he mentioned about people calling themselves spiritual but not religious. To him, spirituality is about having a childlike wonder, and being free to question, discover and explore (the mysteries of life) with a sense of awe and wonder, and being open to different ways of looking at things, whereas religion is about being dogmatic and fundamentalist. This view sits well with me.

On another note, it is perhaps no surprise that many people in the christian circles, such as evangelical preachers in general, choose to equate spirituality with Jesus because Jesus has been a central figure in christianity for so long (about 2,000 years or so) that people in mainstream christianity have all along assumed (including myself in the past) that he was a historical character - after all, the idea of Jesus coming to save, love, heal and comfort us and to set us free from religion is a comforting and compelling thought itself. It may explain why the recent video "Why I hate religion but love Jesus" is so popular among those in the christian circles.

To me, after coming to see the bible as a collection of myths and legends, I now see spirituality in a broader perspective - for example, native Amercian spirituality to me is considered spirituality, which revolves around the concept of our oneness with the Great Spirit and with Mother Earth and all living things. Music is spirituality too. I think anything that enables us to keep in touch with our soul can be considered spirituality.

In my recent blog "To be spiritual is to be amazed", I concluded:

"For me, I would say any belief that does not cause harm to oneself or others and instead produces the fruit of love, peace and unity is of the truth because the truth always sets us free."

 I have also read the article "Spiritual, But Not Religious", and I can relate especially to this observation.

"Forsaking formal religious organizations, these people have instead embraced an individualized spirituality that includes picking and choosing from a wide range of alternative religious philosophies. They typically view spirituality as a journey intimately linked with the pursuit of personal growth or development."

I agree spirituality is meant to be individualised, since everyone has a subjective view or opinion about God/Divine, which is influenced by a person's upbringing, culture, experiences and so on. Each person's experiences in life are unique, and it has been suggested by some inspirational sources that we all have our own unique spiritual DNA, so to speak.

I also believe we are already spiritual beings on a human journey, so there is no need for people to become more spiritual (in the sense of becoming more holy or moral or perfect, which itself is a form of legalism). The fact that we are moved by music, art, beauty and love is testimony that each of us is spiritual, and yet at the same time, we also need to connect with our humanity, in terms of our emotions.

I suppose the general idea I have at this point of my journey is that spirituality has to do with experiencing a sense of inner bliss that is unchanging, whereas humanity has to do with our emotions and thoughts (such as those of fears, worries, anger, disappointment, hurts as well as happiness, peace, elation, excitement, passion) that are fluctuating and everchanging - I would say both are equally necessary and normal and natural parts of our human existence. We all need to embrace both the spiritual and human sides of ourselves.

Blessing opens us up to greater healing

"Blessing may be defined as a quality of thought/feeling/emotion that allows us to redefine our feelings about something that's hurting us now or has hurt us in the past. Stated another way, blessing something is the 'lubricant' that frees our hurtful emotions, opening us up to greater healing, rather than keeping our emotions stuck and unresolved within the body. To lubricate our emotions, we must acknowledge

(bless) all aspects of those hurtful things: such as those who suffer, the cause of the suffering, and those who witness the outcome.

"I often find at this point in any discussion of what blessing is that it's important to be very clear about what it is not. When we bless someone who's hurt us, clearly we aren't suggesting that what has happened is okay or that we'd like it to happen again. Blessing doesn't condone or make excuses for any atrocity or act of suffering. It doesn't put a stamp of approval on a hurtful event, or suggest that we would ever choose to re-experience it.

"What blessing does do is free us from our painful experiences. It acknowledges that those events, whatever they were, have occurred. When we do so, our feelings about those experiences move through out bodies instead of getting stuck inside them. In this way, blessings is the key to reaching Rumi's field beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing. Blessing is the key to accessing the space between. It temporarily suspends our hurt long enough so that we can replace it with another feeling."

Secrets of the Lost Mode of Prayer, pages 100-101, Gregg Braden

I think it is a sensitive and balanced description about how blessing and acknowledging all aspects of hurt and suffering enables us to be free from the hurtful emotions and experience greater healing. It allows us to feel the emotions and not suppress them, and at the same time, it moves us beyond Rumi's field of right doing and wrong doing, as aptly described by Gregg Braden, and see things for what they are. While we are in no way condoning the hurtful things some people have done to us nor do we want to re-experience them, we begin to see a bigger picture that those who hurt us are hurting themselves and many a times they know not what they were doing. I think this is how Jesus was able to bless those who hurt him.

What Does the Climate and Weather Patterns Say about Our Collective Consciousness?

Since emotions are a form of energy, our emotions can effect the environment and weather patterns. Emotions are a form of energy, and perhaps an excessive amount of negative energy, such as anger, hate, fear, guilt, etc, contributes to tornados, hurricanes, flooding, etc.

We control the weather to a certain extent when we send negative energy into the atmosphere. Psalm 82 seems to suggest this idea. I think Joseph Prince mentioned something similar in one of his sermons quite recently, perhaps earlier in the year 2010. He was teaching about the importance of having a “no condemnation” mindset, because when people feel condemned and think negative thoughts about themselves and/or others, they can affect the environment and even cause adverse weather phenomena, like typhoons, around the world. So yea, the gospel is so important because when people align their minds with the good news that God loves them and is not mad at them, they will be at ease and at peace with themselves and with others too, and the environment will also be more peaceful (in terms of being free from natural calamities).

Makes me think that some of the natural disasters like earthquakes in the Old Testament were not caused by God (though they appeared to be) – they were probably caused by negative thoughts or emotions of the children of Israel when they were under the law — they felt condemned and bad things started to happen to them; for example, earthquakes swallowing up some people or the fiery serpents appeared in the desert to bite them (hence God told Moses to put the bronze serpent on a pole for them to look — to see that their guilty conscience (or accuser) has been judged and they should no longer feel condemned or guilty), or the armies of Moab and other nations rising up to attack them. You can read more about how the gospel affects our consciousness here.

Looks like we’re indeed living in a matrix world of sorts. So important then for us all to guard our heart (our mindset or belief system or our thought life) from fear and condemnation because out of it springs forth the issues of life. (Proverbs 4) It’s good for our hearts to be established with grace, as Hebrews 13 also says.

Sin-consciousness, condemnation, guilt… all these negative feelings contribute to our environments.

So, start thinking happy thoughts.

Related Posts:

The Effect of Human Thoughts and Emotions on Weather Patterns

Reflections: How the Gospel Affects our Consciousness