What’s behind the “sudden epidemic” of Christian hate?

The media has been a blaze with news reports of Xtians launching hate campaigns across the nation.  Not just your usual everyday Xtians, these are pastors – leaders of flocks, men of God, and followers of Christ.

Of particular note are these:
May 2, Pastor Sean Harris of NC, tells his congregation to beat their gay children  until they turn heterosexual. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTiBv99MYDk

May 25, also in North Carolina, Pastor Charles L. Worley demanded gays be put into concentration camps until they die out. http://www.thedailybeast.com/videos/2012/05/25/north-carolina-pastor-put-gays-in-concentration-camps.html

June 5, Rev. John Hagee (the same reverend John McCain originally courted and won the support of in 2008, then dumped) called for atheists to leave the country because we are hated and are bringing it down. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75b1FMzGTB8&feature=youtu.be .

And most recently on June 8 Pastor Terry Jones, of the Koran burning debacle which resulted in riots and death across the middle east and endangered our service people, lynched an effigy of President Obama from a gallows in front of his church (see pic above).  http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/06/08/lynched/

A friend asked my opinion of what was going on.  Why this sudden spate of hateful rhetoric from the pulpit?  Was this venomous rhetoric in place of preaching God’s eternal love and kindness some kind of inexplicable epidemic that has infected the preachers of the “Prince of Peace’s religion”? 

Hardly, I explained.  This is simply the norm amongst the most devout purveyors of Christian kindness. That it is so readily observable is attributable to the internet’s and Youtube’s sharpened view of what otherwise would have been just fuzzy local events. These messages of hate, violence and intolerance have been preached from the pulpit and readily accepted by enthusiastic Christian sheeple for time immemorial. It is just less overt than the Christian inspired mass violence of pre 21^st century practitioners..

“Wait a minute.” My friend interrupted.  “Christianity is all about love, exemplified by the sacrifice God made for us. Jesus said ‘Those who are without sin should cast the first stone.’ He said  ‘Judge not lest ye be judged.” He said ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’... What these men are saying isn’t at all what Jesus had in mind.”

And of course he’s right, but not in the way he thinks. If Jesus ever existed, what he had in mind was freeing Israel / Judea from foreign occupation, and restoring the Jewish throne, just like all the other Jewish “messiahs” that preceded and followed him. His kindly admonishments were for his own people, observant Jews who embraced and abided by the 613 rules/laws of the Tanakh. He had jack shit to say about how to treat those of varied races, those born with differing sexual preferences and those who weren’t your “neighbors” in belief.  He expected everyone to simply revert to the Tanakh, the Torah, AKA the Old Testament for guidance.  In short: “In the absence of Jesus’ enlightened Rule #2, revert to ass kicking vindictive Rule #1.”

What these good Christian pastors are doing is precisely what the “good book” tells them to do.  Oh selectively to be sure. After all, it’s much more convenient to justify and promote God’s endorsement of retribution for those you already hate, and for beating your children, and promoting the extinction of homosexuals, and the expulsion of heathens who don’t share your delusion, than it is to endorse his rule against wearing mixed fiber clothes and not eating Shrimp Creole.

Nah, it’s not an inexplicable epidemic of mass hatred infecting Christians.  It’s simply true Christianity conducting its business as usual... exposed to the world by modern technology.

 Eventually the veil will be totally lifted, the pretext dropped, and some enterprising pastor will have bumper stickers made and distributed to his congregation with a time honored, if unofficial motto:
“Christianity – Sowing Hate, Embracing  Ignorance & Killing with Kindness for Almost 2000 Years.”