Thursday November 11, 2004

THEY WILL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR LOVE. From alleged mail to the National Review Online:

I agree that Arafat was a bad man, and when I heard he was dying, I was glad. But that fact in itself causes grief: that there would be someone so bad that I would wish him dead. I'm a Christian, and I believe Arafat's in hell right now, and that also makes me sad. He could have chosen differently and he and the world would have
been better off.

I can understand why this guy prefers Arafat dead to Arafat alive. But what's interesting is that he describes himself as a Christian.

Having been raised Catholic, I recall -- and still try to observe, as it makes good moral sense -- the eminently Christian principle that we should not judge any former humans to be in hell, or in heaven for that matter (excepting the saints and the beatified), because to presume to know the mind of God, whose judgement alone settles the matter, challenges our humility before him. (Initial caps on pronouns deleted due to apostasy.)

I realize that Catholicism is the Tiffany of Jesus cults, and that the downmarket variants based in our nation's backwaters may have sloppier standards. Still, how strange that a professed follower of the Prince of Peace would so cravenly offload the responsibilities implicit in an imitation of Christ! Instead, he just feels "sad" that he feels "glad" about the death of a man that was "bad." No idea there that cheering a man's death is something in itself to repent. Did it never occur to him to pray for Arafat's soul?

Even the old National Review, before its thorough debasement in recent years, would put "R.I.P." next to their death notices for people whom they clearly despised. Christian hypocracy? Well, yes, but of the nobler sort. Now they can't even muster that.

There's another little insight into the Values Voters.
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