Mike and I watched Hotel Rwanda last night. Of course, I cried like an infant. I was depressed at the end; it's not like there's been swimming progress regarding genocide in Africa.
I was still lucid at the end of the film, which is more than I can say for when I saw Schindler's List (on a first date; bad idea). Or when I saw the film, The Killing Fields, and toured the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum as a 17-year-old exchange student in Israel--the summer of my rude awakening to some of more horrific events in world history.
If you've seen Hotel Rwanda, you'll recall the slur the Hutus used to describe the Tutsis: cockroaches. As if this was self-evident justification for slaughtering them.
Today, while I was having lunch with a couple I know, the husband launched into a diatribe about the proposed border fence. Hurry up and build it! Electrify it! If someone gets zapped, too bad; they were trying to cross illegally! Those people are cockroaches!
Of course, he couldn't have known the impact of that word on me. Or how far my opinion of him plummeted in that moment.
Or how guarded I'll be when I see him at church from now on.
Each time I hear church people spout opinions like this--and it happens a lot--I feel alienated. Like I'm never going to have real friends here.
Instead, I'll have a slew of church acquaintances who supposedly share the same set of religious beliefs, but whose opinions, biases or bigotry detour them off the Christian path.
I feel reluctant to share my whole self (including my vastly different opinions, biases, and hatred of bigotry). And I feel physically queasy to hear a guy I go to church with refer to other human beings as cockroaches.
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This is among the reasons I left the church. I got tired of these types of opinions and speaking out against them. Still, I have hope that one day members like that will hear their words mirrored back to them and will eat humble pie.
You were more restrained that I would have been. I likely would have said something like, "Bro. So-and-So, I wonder if Heavenly Father thinks of His children on the other side of the border as cockroaches" or "I'm sorry, but could explain to me why God's children in Mexico are cockroaches and we're not?" or "Wow! I am surprised to hear you say that. Did you just hear yourself?"
Of course, in truth, when stuff like this happens, I'm just as flabbergasted and speechless in the moment. It's just too unbelievable and incomprehensible in this day and age, isn't it? And yet, it isn't....
It was more shock than restraint.
FYI, there are no good Muslims, either. Just bloodthirsty ones. The kind who strap explosives to children so they can destroy Israel. The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq started on 9/11. And the Mexicans who cross the border illegally aren't the kind of people we want as citizens.
To make matters worse, he's not a *completely* bad guy. I've seen him display some admirable qualities. I can't say the same for his opinions, though. The real question: how do I quash the desire to throttle this guy?
Ugh. UGH!
P.S. The next time this dude goes off like that, you might remind him that more than 50% of the church's membership now resides OUTSIDE the United States. Then ask him if he thinks those members, who are also trying to provide for their families in the same manner he is trying to provide and who love their families as much as he loves his, are cockroaches.
Swizzies is right: UGH!
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