Recently a well-known religionist gave a sermon in which he told people that God hated them. This caused quite a stir as witnessed by how many people jumped onto the internet to correct what they took to be incorrect teaching: “God doesn’t hate you, God loves you.”
The issue here is that, for someone who resonates with the idea that God hates them, the opposite message is unlikely to find a landing place. That message resonates with some people for a reason. The more interesting, astute and pastoral approach is to avoid trying to “correct” the belief and simply ask a person who relates to that message of divine hatred “why?”: in short, to work out why such an idea would hit home, and then work though the reasons with them.
The trick, obviously, is that this cuts both ways. If someone says, “I believe God loves me” we might be more likely not to ask them why they believe this simply because we think it is a more healthy view. But people can consciously believe things we think are healthy for the most unhealthy of reasons (for instance, the conscious belief “God loves me” might act as a means of you avoiding the fact that you are in a abusive marriage and doing something about it).
This means that if someone believes everything I believe I still have to ask “why?” I need to work out how the beliefs function for that person. Do they act as a security blanket preventing them from encountering the world, or do they function as a means of more fully entering into the world they inhabit (for any system, including my own, can act in that way as
Katharine Moody insightfully pointed out).
Originally Posted by Peter Rollins
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