I wish I had worked up this one last week, particularly for Friday. It would have been appropriate, I think.
Jesus' disciples must work to dehabitualize and delegitimize even small expressions of aggression like name-calling. They must realize the dangers of language that dehumanizes the other--whether it is Hutus in Rwanda calling Tutsis "cockroaches" and "tall trees," or political and religious leaders using language like "infidel" or "terrorist" or "axis of evil," or a husband and wife trading insults in a loud, late-night argument.
McLaren, everything must change, p. 179
First, I can imagine McLaren, if he had been alive when Jesus was on Earth, going up to Him and saying something like "You really shouldn't call the Pharisees and others things like hyprocrites and blind guides and vipers. That dehumanizes them, and we who are disciples of yours just don't think that's right."
Second, I wonder what kinds of people he thinks committed the acts of 9-11-01? Consider that he thinks calling people "terrorists" is unacceptable, what else is he going to allow us to call them? What other name for such scum would be acceptable to McLaren? Or what should we call those who put bombs on themselves, or on women, and send them into busses and market places, to blow themselves up and as many others as they can, in places like Iraq and Israel and even Britain? Or who blow up trains in Spain?
And was a description ever more accurate than President Bush's of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea as the "Axis of Evil"? Iran and NK are without doubt two of the bigger hot spots in the world, and one need only consider how Iran handled the recent protests of their election to see evil, or how NK's insane ruler allows his people to starve in the midst of his socialist paradise.
McLaren isn't speaking out for love, but for political correctness. Such a pale imitation of love is to be shunned, not adopted.
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