Love and Loathing | Sojourners

Love and Loathing

Letter to the Editors

Our immediate reaction to Rosemary Hugo’s letter ("Letters," May 1994) was, "How cleverly she has written!" It is the sort of brilliant interpretation that enables crafty lawyers to get guilty persons off scot-free!

Unfortunately, re-reading with thoughtfulness shows her letter to be also a strange mixture of language misuse (her point 1), question-begging (6), unfairness (9), and illogic (all 9 points individually). Point number 8, claiming compassion for homosexuals by the Christian Right, reminds one of the "compassion" of earlier Christian zealots: torturing and killing American Indians to induce such to "accept Christ," or burning at the stake those who differed from themselves, "in order to save their eternal souls."

In alleging hidden presuppositions by Jim Rice, she somehow overlooked his two basic presuppositions: that "God is love," and "you shall love your neighbor as yourself." And sadly, her attack on Rice’s article as "full of fear, loathing, and prejudice" merely betrays her own overwhelming prejudice.

But we must concede that she is right on one point: Not all anti-gay feeling is due to homophobia. Some of it is due to misunderstanding of the nature of scripture, a failure to recognize that our beloved "written Word of God"—like our blessed Lord Jesus—is human as well as divine.

Let us beseech our generous, omniscient, omnipotent Creator to give all of us more spiritual wisdom, more true insight, and more humility.

Gwen and Bob Bergh
Riverside, California

Sojourners Magazine August 1994
This appears in the August 1994 issue of Sojourners