⁴³ “You have heard that it was said, You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. ⁴⁴ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who harass you ⁴⁵ so that you will be acting as children of your [Parent] who is in heaven. [God] makes the sun rise on both the evil and the good and sends rain on both the righteous and the unrighteous. ⁴⁶ If you love only those who love you, what reward do you have? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your [siblings], what more are you doing? Don’t even the Gentiles do the same? ⁴⁸ Therefore, just as your heavenly [Parent] is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.
— Matthew 5:43-48 CEB, [Inclusivity Edits Marked]

Introduction/Motivation

This piece took me way too long to write. I keep opening it, editing, not getting more written, and then getting tired and discouraged, ultimately closing it without advancing. This post on Bluesky by Alex Watson (Technology Connections) reminded me of my intentions and goals — and that this topic rises far above “frivolity” in my ethic:

Anyone who says "This is what they voted for" in response to the tragedy unfolding in Texas is having a vile thought and needs to sit shamefully in a corner until they learn what solidarity is.

— Technology Connections (@techconnectify.bsky.social) July 5, 2025 at 10:04 AM

https://embed.bsky.app/static/embed.js

I opened it and started writing. I believe this issues rises higher than frivolity and stands in the way of any progress now or in the future.

With the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” and absolute gutting of Medicare/Medicaid and food assistance while providing tax breaks for the wealthiest; masked ICE agents abducting people off the streets, from their mandated immigration court appearances, and low-paying but absolutely necessary jobs to ensure we all eat; legalized discrimination against trans people in Iowa; and every other evil and terrible thing that has happened over the last roughly five months, I have seen a lot of people posting things like “Have the day you voted for!” and “%$#& around and find out!” when people in Republican-voting states suffer the actions of the current administration.

(I have thoughts on information dissemination, political games, and the DNC completely ignoring Iowa, but this is not that piece.)

I have seen this attitude since the inauguration. So many self-righteous progressives and leftists have loud and limitless contempt, going far enough to celebrate the death of literal children because Texas.

I have an ethic of “love everyone, hate no one.” This does not preclude fury, protesting, or taking the peace away from elected officials when they are in public, but it does bar me from celebrating the suffering of anyone. You can define suffering pretty narrowly —discomfort, like having your peace denied while in public if you pass terrible legislation allowing landlords to evict trans people for existing, is objectively not suffering — but we should not rejoice in things like a Republican voter losing their healthcare and the objective suffering that will come of it.

We just cannot, if for no other reason than our hearts grow sick with hatred and contempt when we do but also because every person is human and deserving of life.

I recently posted a video just asking for compassion toward everyone. I advocated for, amongst “everyone,” compassion toward those who “hate” you and voted in a way that will cause you suffering.¹ I have long held that compassion and empathy for those whose attitudes you find abhorrent will lead to understanding why they hold those beliefs, which can lead to helping people who would not inherently hold hateful beliefs find a path away from their hatred. Passively just loving people can help and actively holding their whole being in compassion can really heal and moving someone to a better place, but both require you do not hold contempt for anyone (and certainly not celebrating just how much contempt you hold and how much suffering you hope for).

I know showing compassion and leaving contempt behind can work to cure a heart of hatred because loving people had compassion for me and worked to understand me and who I was, ultimately helping me to leave behind hateful and harmful beliefs they found abhorrent. Those who held judgement and contempt for me drove me away, progressive and traditionalist alike; those who loved the full version of me brought me in.

Having compassion for a person whose views you find abhorrent does not strengthen those views or give them tacit approval; it simply shows you chose to see this person and their humanity instead of labeling them an irredeemable ball of evil to destroy. Importantly, showing compassion does not mean showing joyful affection; you can have deep and righteous anger toward a person without denying them compassion or dehumanizing them.

You can simultaneously have fury at and compassion for a person, but it requires choosing to do so.

I posted that video, and I received one comment admonishing me to not hug Nazis. It made all my desire to increase love in the world feel futile, and I just cannot bring myself to try again.

This weighed on my heart. Does the gospel call for empathy and compassion, or have I read it wrong? Conservatives have called empathy a sin, and maybe I just do not understand the book I preach from. I believe we should have empathy and compassion for hearts sick with hatred, even if we need to admonished them for the sins that hatred causes in them.

Did the great physician not come to heal their sinful ways, too? Do these people not qualify as our “neighbors” Christ very clearly called us to love?

We do not need to like people who hold these beliefs and act in these ways, we do not need to welcome them into our spaces, we do not need to maintain relationships with them, even those from our legal and biological families — I have severed relationships over my inability to abide by the hateful rhetoric of loved ones — but we do not get carte blanche permission to deny compassion, empathy, and love to anyone, or to celebrate their suffering.

None of this obligates us to relationship, but it does obligate us to love. And having the strength to maintain relationship and treat the other as human can help heal the hateful heart, including the unknowing hateful heart.

I know “can” does a lot of heavy lifting throughout what I wrote above, but I know it can because it did for me.

“…it did for me.”

I need to disclose two truths about myself to explain this.

One, I am open and affirming. That means I believe homosexuality is not a sin, trans people should have their identities affirmed by the church, and sexual sins has everything to do with consent and nothing to do with heteronormativity.

(If you are just learning this, “Hi! Welcome to my seldom-updated blog. If this makes you uncomfortable, probably not going to find much comfort here.”)

Two, I entered seminary believing the exact opposite of one. I believed homosexuals were unredeemable, trans people were sick, and anything sexual outside of heterosexual Christian marriage was sinful.

You also need to understand the theology of “Total Depravity” to understand me fully (and how I started to pull out of my bigoted views). In short, “Total Depravity” means that each of us is completely broken and totally fall short of the glory of God, and any sin rightly condemns us to Hell. Our only salvation comes from Jesus dying on the cross and rising again.

My understanding of sin, atonement, and grace has evolved and matured — and softened like mature wine, I hope — but conceptually I still take some comfort in that theology. My salvation does not depend on my goodness but on God’s love; what that means beyond “God loves me, and Jesus saves me” goes well beyond the scope of this post, but ultimately it reminds me that God loves me even in my brokenness.

The seminary I attended became embroiled in the homosexuality debate shortly before I started attending, and it ultimately split the student body into two camps (if I grossly oversimplify the situation there). I also started seminary in-between the passage of 10-A at General Assembly and its ratification by presbyteries over the following months (that link is a PDF-document primer on the change published after ratification became apparent).

I came in believing homosexuality was uniquely condemnable, but I shortly after started questioning that for a lot of reasons, but mostly the “uniquely” part. The argument “they continue to commit their sins without shame or regret” told to me by men who justified a whole host of their own sins — including emotional abuse — just did not sit well with me, and I also knew I had my own sins I needed to work on.

For one example, I have struggled with gluttony my entire life. I can attribute a significant part to mental health struggles and culture — I come from a food culture where we express love by causing high cholesterol and diabetes — but I also just eat and have not found a new therapist to help with the mental health struggles. I hold some culpability in what harms me even if I do not hold all of it.

I began my journey to my shifting position with this: why was my gluttony, which does active harm to my body, somehow less condemnable than consensual homosexuality? Why could I be ordained in my obesity but someone else denied ordination because of their sexuality?

It defied logic, and so I began to ask where the line of irredeemability lay. Which sins could God not forgive? Why this one and not that one? Which sins should preclude one from service in the church, and which ones could we permit?

I never got an answer. People treated the question as absurd and then continued to tell me that homosexuality was uniquely condemnable. They never had a reason, only judgement for me asking.

If you cannot tell me why, or will not tell me why, then your truth is not truth but a lie that you either believe despite its falsehood or benefit from telling. Once one truth becomes a lie, you start to question what other truths are lies.

Quick pause to fly above my story. You may find yourself saying, “But you were self-aware and questioning…” and that is true, but it supposes a uniqueness to me I would love to have but seriously doubt I do. I am compassionate and thoughtful, but so are others who grew up seeped in the same doctrines and politics I did. Many of these people have questions and doubts, and most will find complete sounding incomplete answers or refutations of the questions (or, more likely, condemnations of any and all doubts) when they speak them aloud.

I got incredibly lucky to have a few people love me enough to help me find my answers. Yes, they held similar answers to what I landed upon, but they walked beside my questioning and did not push me. They did not offer absolutes, just thoughts and love.

I see intelligent, thoughtful, loving people I grew up with who received and accepted answers from people love them but hold bigoted and hateful views of others. The only real difference between us comes down to who responded to their questioning. Unless I am the most unique of the unique butterflies, then I do not represent the uniqueness in my story; rather, having the space to question and compassionate people to walk with me in my journey to find my answers is.

My Enneagram 4 heart would love to be that most unique butterfly, but I just am not. If I am not, then more people can have their hearts healed of hatred and bigotry than any progressive seems to want to admit.

Back down to the story. When I began to question and my practical position on the ordination issue waivered and shifted, I struggled to find a place to be. Traditionalists condemned my doubts and told me to “spend more time in doctrine class,” progressives demanded I immediately fall in line and subtly objected to how I came to this new understanding. If not for those who loved me, all of me, and walked beside me instead of pulling me in their direction, I would never have gotten anywhere but isolation or falling back into the traditionalist church that now supports Christian Nationalism and Neo-Nazism.²

I can count those people on one hand, but they loved me enough to help me find my way. (If you were in my wedding or supervised me during an internship, I am talking about you). I do not know who guided me secretly and subtly, but I know many who pulled hard on the ropes to force me somewhere I was not ready to go or would not actually get to.

Love and compassion matched with withholding contempt can work and does work sometimes; I am living proof.³

Seminary Sucked

No matter if love and compassion change a heart or not, contempt has never changed the heart you have contempt for. It will make your heart sicker with hate, but it will not change anyone for the better and will drive them away. You cannot show compassion and love to someone, or guide them, if you hold contempt for them.

This needs an illustration, but one outside of our current suffering. I have an example of a professor seemingly having contempt for me — contempt observed by others, not just my mentally unwell self — and how that did not improve my skills but rather almost made me quit seminary.

I had a few inherent talents I came into seminary with. I needed training and practice like everyone else does to make them skills, but we each have things we thrive at and things we struggle with.

Hebrew and Greek, you nearly sunk this ship, and only the most gracious of gracious professors ensured you did not.

I had an externally recognized inherent talent in one area of parish ministry before taking the relevant course in that area. I dreamed of getting “A+, best ever!” as feedback, but I truly expected to get an A or B in the assignments in this course, or in the back of my mind expected to actually receive a C with substantial feedback justifying the grade given the hard work I put in. I had fallen off the pedestal I placed myself upon enough times already to know I could do mediocre work despite my talents.

I submitted my first assignment. We had a feedback session for the assignment where the professor allowed the conversation to devolve into toxic attacks upon me. I received a D+ without a rubric justifying the grade. Never in my academic career had I received a grade so undeservedly without justification at all; I had, again, been knocked off my pedestal a few times, but always with justification.

It became clear that I would only pass this class by the skin of my teeth, and no amount of effort on my part could ensure this. From that moment forward even valid critique got discounted in my mind because it did not come from an objective place but only from a professor’s contempt.

I got advice to “just do what they want and pass,” and this was a core class that required a higher grade than just passing, but the contempt the professor showed for me combined with the simultaneous situation described above made me incapable of doing what they demanded of me in bad faith. It became a game without clearly defined rules, and I lose every time my life and career become a game and I try to actually play it.

Today I know what I should have done in that situation — I should have taken the advice for my own growth because externally imposed boundaries, even those imposed by bad faith actors, force creativity in ways a boundary-less situation does not — but in the midst of having someone who could completely derail my career having nothing but contempt for me and me having totally failed only once in my life previously, I just could not grow or learn in that environment.

I did learn a few things in that class, but the unsafe feedback sessions and contempt from the professor limited my learning to what I could have learned on my own from a book. I actually wonder how much I would have grown in that area given my inherent talents if I had a good and loving experience, even a challenging one, instead of an experience built on contempt.

Contempt does not change anyone for the better; it only breeds fear, resentment, and woundedness for everyone.

But I Want To

When I see the contempt and schadenfreude at the legitimate and substantial suffering of others, I know why. It becomes catharsis; they did something that caused me pain, so they should suffer the consequences of that action. Contempt makes us to interpret suffering as justice, and greater contempt can cause us to long for greater suffering, thus greater justice.

It can grow so great that we place blame on small children for their suffering and celebrate their deaths because they “voted for this.”

That response, thankfully, only came from a small minority of people — the words of that minority turned even the coldest of progressive judgmental stomachs because it should sicken you — but I have seen celebrations of lacking healthcare and physical suffering of adults with that stupid “Have the day you voted for!” rainbow meme that encourages joyful and constant contempt as actual resistance.

I ask this question: how much suffering do you celebrate? How much suffering do they deserve?

Define suffering narrowly, do not confuse discomfort with suffering, all that jazz. How much suffering do you believe those who earn your fury should experience? How much is enough?

For me, that amount is zero. No sin is worthy of suffering; Christ came to save and heal all, and none of us has achieved righteousness. Yes, discomfort and termination of familial relationships is on the table, but literal pain and death are very clearly not.

Quite a few people feel differently. Many people in my circles want Republicans to suffer (narrow definition) and celebrate it every time it happens. I have had my desire for people not to suffer interpreted as tacit approval for the evil actions of the government. I still feel schadenfreude, but I have pretty hard limits that I find other people lack.

Humans revel in having contempt for others; hatred comes much easier than love, especially for our enemies. Most have a deep well of compassion for the oppressed and marginalized, but a narrowed view of who qualifies and hard refusal to acknowledge how ordinary people who vote against their own self-interest are often also victims of propaganda and systems designed to keep them down.

Virulent racists exist, virulent homophobes and transphobes exist, virulent sexists exist, and they may fall outside of our ability to save in this lifetime, but ordinary people also exist who make good and bad decisions based upon good and bad information they have. If we do not celebrate the suffering of the addict, we should not celebrate the suffering of the victims of US political propaganda.

But we do. I see it constantly, I see it justified, I see it celebrated, I see implications that not celebrating it is tacitly approving the actions of the government. This waxes and wanes depending of the sufferer, but it happens every time, and it turns my stomach.

I know I am a straight, white guy with a graduate degree, middle-class salary, and very good health coverage in an area with adequate medical providers; this directly affects me slower than many people. My rage comes second-hand at the suffering of others that I can choose to view from a safe distance. I know the people my circles have contempt for look a lot like me, and I know righteous anger has gotten heard as contempt and hatred in my ears.

I know all of this, but I just cannot abide by contempt and celebration of suffering any more than I can abide by racism and homophobia. We can have fury, protest, and resist without falling into hatred if we choose to.

You need to want to love everyone to do that, though.

The Problem/Conclusion

What is the ultimate problem with our contempt? I could continue to speak about how it harms progress and harms the other, but ultimately it harms those who hold contempt in their hearts. It harms you, not just the other

When our hearts get sick with hatred, we start dehumanizing the other and no longer see suffering but just justice served. Once you celebrate the suffering of one, then there is no bar to cross of how evil or bad someone needs to be to celebrate their suffering, and eventually you cheer when ordinary people suffer the actions of the elites.

I find myself remembering that Dr. King quote:

“I have decided to stick to love…Hate is too great a burden to bear.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

I have recently wasted a bunch of time creating a few versions of this graphic that asks a question: Can we try love?

“It seems better than hate.” I find myself thinking this often and wondering why I ask the question.

We so often talk about love denied to those the church has historically cast out — people of color, LGBTQ+ folks, etc. — but we seem to assume everyone who is not in that group feels love for their whole being in the church, and I can assure you that is not the case.

Maybe if we loved everyone in their fullness, especially we who live and serve in the church world and proclaim to follow Jesus’s live and teachings, we could find healing for ourselves. If we could let our hatred and contempt go, we could find it within ourselves to not celebrate suffering. If we would choose love, then hate would have no place, which benefits us as much as it benefits the ones we currently have hate and contempt for.

And maybe we could work on deepening our understanding of love to find ways to have fury and love simultaneously.

Dr. King did not mince words of admonition and spoke with much righteous fury. He had very harsh words for moderate whites and the harm they caused with their silence and desire for peace over justice. Did he actually live into that quote? I do not know, but I can see furious admonition in his words without contempt and celebration of suffering of those he admonished.

Maybe I am an idealist demanding the impossible; so be it. I still have a deep well of contempt for that seminary professor (and others involved in my ordination process), and I know it causes me harm to feel that contempt. Giving up our contempt, stopping our celebrations of suffering, and loving our enemies will heal us, and I believe heal the world if enough of us can do it.

There is great evil and hatred today— turn on the news and you will see it — but we cannot defeat it by participating with our own evil and hatred.

Ultimately contempt and hatred are resignation and despair. It means we lost and concede. Hope cannot come from that place, and neither can change.

Can we try love just once? I do not think we ever have before.

Peace,
— Robby

¹ I do not believe most of them voted for you to suffer; again, not that piece, but a lot of people voted for the lies they heard, not the truths intentionally obfuscated by noise.
² If you are wondering why not the progressive side, I am not ideologically pure enough nor fall in line with the right people enough to be welcome there fully. Something about accepting the whole person has not applied to me and a few other folks like me. Maybe a story for a different time with more than zero inebriation.
³ This piece does not represent the full evolution of my understanding of homosexuality and God, just the beginning of the journey. I have probably written on this previously, maybe…