Christian Fear Or Christian Love?

Andrew Sullivan has a post with the caption set forth above and it deals with the fact that the faith of most Christianists is defined by fear and/or who is excluded and hated. It is a far cry from the example of Christ in the Gospels who condemned the self-satisfied and self-righteous who liked to define others as sinners and/or unworthy. Check out the websites of organizations like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, Concerned Women for America, etc., and what is the most stark is that these organizations hate and demonize all who are not far right white evangelical Christians. Historically, the Roman Catholic Church is not much better. Growing up, there was constant emphasis of "us" Catholics versus them, the Protestants. Here are some highlights:

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"Civil marriage for all; religious marriage for all who want to supplement it with God's grace. Why is that so hard for some people of faith to grasp? Why are their marriages defined not by the virtues they sustain but the people they exclude?"

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Because -- as you well know -- their faiths themselves are defined by the people they exclude: the unbelievers, the unsaved (or let's be blunt: the "damned"), the always-demonized Other: without that division, that exclusion, their entire theology, indeed their entire worldview, collapses. . . . And why? Because despite their fine words, and their closely-guarded self-images, the actual and real ruling principle of their lives and their theology is fear, not love.

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Everything flows from that original orientation, that original choice (because it is, finally, a choice). For them, to be inclusive is to expose themselves to what they fear; and what they fear most is summarized in their mythology of hell and eternal damnation: an eternal torture of body, mind, soul and spirit administered by an angry, vengeful, psychopathic god. It is all pure projection.

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And irony of ironies, it is precisely the opposite of the message the Christian Savior tried to bring: that salvation is found only through love, through inclusion, through openness of mind and heart and spirit, through, ultimately, trust -- that this world, with all its difficulties and pain and imperfections, built through evolution, and including endless Others, is as it should be, as it was intended to be.