A Time to Hate
Sixty years ago, days before my 15th birthday, “The Sound of Music” was released to the world. Like millions, I have seen it many times, on screens large and small. I have played and sung the music for decades. I have been in love with Julie/Maria since that first time, and today I pause to wish her a happy and healthy 90th birthday.
Then and now, “The Sound of Music” is one of the most popular movies ever made: buses still take tourists around Salzburg to see the iconic sites where the scenes were shot: where Maria and the children fell into the river, where Maria sought refuge and counsel at the abbey, and where Rolf and Liesl danced the night away before his defection to the Nazi regime.
It is that defection that comes to mind now more than ever, as I contemplate those among us who have gone over to the dark side. I refer to the men and women of ICE.
Let me be plain: I hate ICE.
I hate their mission. I hate their tactics. I hate their uniforms. I hate their masks. I hate their guns. I hate their secrecy. I hate their camps.
Every time I see a video of ICE agents at work, my stomach turns and my spirit shrinks. “This is not American,” I think to myself. “This is not humane, and this is certainly not Christian.”
Yes, I know what the apostle says, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer,” and I don’t know how to square that with the way I feel about ICE except to confess that I hate ICE personnel as agents of wickedness and violence and meanness. They may be good neighbors to somebody, even good members of a church choir somewhere. That is one reason they wear their masks. Like their white-hooded ancestors, they want to conceal their identity and protect their standing. They don’t want people to know what they do.
And what they do is this: they seize people from their workstations, from their families, from their neighborhoods and send them to detention, deportation, and danger—even death, for some. It is ungodly work. It is dehumanizing work. It is evil work.
“Hate what is evil” another apostle wrote in our Holy Bible, and we all maintain a list of things we hate, of things that violate the most basic values of life: trafficking children, swindling seniors, enslaving people, bombing families that have no where go, no where to sleep, no where to hide.
I hate the work of ICE.
It is driven from the top by a racial animosity that fears the brown and black peoples of the world, that thinks there are too many too close and too present. It is energized by a macho disposition that pervades too much of our current political culture. It is celebrated as the surest way to Make America Great Again, reminding us (I presume) of the way we as a country treated Native Americans and African Americans (among others).
I wonder how the men and women of ICE react emotionally and spiritually to what they are forced to do. Do they love it or hate it? Do they feel trapped? Are they looking for a way out? Or is the money too good, promotions too promising, benefits to rich to turn away.
I wonder about the PTSD that will emerge years down the road, like soldiers reliving their battlefield trauma. Is it even now settling into the souls of the victims as well as the victors, the brown hunted as well as the white hunter? Will there be a bitter harvest somewhere down the line that will drain happiness, disrupt marriages, and doom people to regret and recrimination?
Every now and then, there are scenes of delight. Did you see the video this week of the delivery man on the bike in Chicago who managed to escape the efforts of out of shape and heavily armed agents who could not run fast enough to seize a person half their size? Did you find yourself cheering for that brave bicyclist? Are you glad he got away? Somebody needs to set that scene to music and play it as a message of hope to the millions who, like me, hate the work and ways of ICE.
“There is a time to love,” we are reminded in the Hebrew Bible (Ecclesiastes) “and there is a time to hate.”
Dwight A. Moody
subscribe below to receive Dr Moody’s free weekly commentary on religion, politics, and life.
A Time to Hate
Sixty years ago, days before my 15th birthday, “The Sound of Music” was released to the world. Like millions, I have seen it many times, on screens large and small. I have played and sung the music for decades. I have been in love with Julie/Maria since that first time, and today I pause to wish her a happy and healthy 90th birthday.
Then and now, “The Sound of Music” is one of the most popular movies ever made: buses still take tourists around Salzburg to see the iconic sites where the scenes were shot: where Maria and the children fell into the river, where Maria sought refuge and counsel at the abbey, and where Rolf and Liesl danced the night away before his defection to the Nazi regime.
It is that defection that comes to mind now more than ever, as I contemplate those among us who have gone over to the dark side. I refer to the men and women of ICE.
Let me be plain: I hate ICE.
I hate their mission. I hate their tactics. I hate their uniforms. I hate their masks. I hate their guns. I hate their secrecy. I hate their camps.
Every time I see a video of ICE agents at work, my stomach turns and my spirit shrinks. “This is not American,” I think to myself. “This is not humane, and this is certainly not Christian.”
Yes, I know what the apostle says, “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer,” and I don’t know how to square that with the way I feel about ICE except to confess that I hate ICE personnel as agents of wickedness and violence and meanness. They may be good neighbors to somebody, even good members of a church choir somewhere. That is one reason they wear their masks. Like their white-hooded ancestors, they want to conceal their identity and protect their standing. They don’t want people to know what they do.
And what they do is this: they seize people from their workstations, from their families, from their neighborhoods and send them to detention, deportation, and danger—even death, for some. It is ungodly work. It is dehumanizing work. It is evil work.
“Hate what is evil” another apostle wrote in our Holy Bible, and we all maintain a list of things we hate, of things that violate the most basic values of life: trafficking children, swindling seniors, enslaving people, bombing families that have no where go, no where to sleep, no where to hide.
I hate the work of ICE.
It is driven from the top by a racial animosity that fears the brown and black peoples of the world, that thinks there are too many too close and too present. It is energized by a macho disposition that pervades too much of our current political culture. It is celebrated as the surest way to Make America Great Again, reminding us (I presume) of the way we as a country treated Native Americans and African Americans (among others).
I wonder how the men and women of ICE react emotionally and spiritually to what they are forced to do. Do they love it or hate it? Do they feel trapped? Are they looking for a way out? Or is the money too good, promotions too promising, benefits to rich to turn away.
I wonder about the PTSD that will emerge years down the road, like soldiers reliving their battlefield trauma. Is it even now settling into the souls of the victims as well as the victors, the brown hunted as well as the white hunter? Will there be a bitter harvest somewhere down the line that will drain happiness, disrupt marriages, and doom people to regret and recrimination?
Every now and then, there are scenes of delight. Did you see the video this week of the delivery man on the bike in Chicago who managed to escape the efforts of out of shape and heavily armed agents who could not run fast enough to seize a person half their size? Did you find yourself cheering for that brave bicyclist? Are you glad he got away? Somebody needs to set that scene to music and play it as a message of hope to the millions who, like me, hate the work and ways of ICE.
“There is a time to love,” we are reminded in the Hebrew Bible (Ecclesiastes) “and there is a time to hate.”
Dwight A. Moody
subscribe below to receive Dr Moody’s free weekly commentary on religion, politics, and life.
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