Hate antithetical to Christianity

Donald Trump’s words of hatred spoken at Charlie Kirk’s memorial service have no place in any of the world’s religions. Those words are also antithetical within humanistic beliefs. They cannot coexist with the fundamentals of our democratic republic.

All of the world’s religious people and religious leaders – in their thoughts, prayers, sermons and public pronouncements – must denounce Trump’s hatred message in clear and unambiguous ways.

Erika Kirk’s message was dramatically different from Trump’s words of hate. Mrs. Kirk stressed how her late husband reached out to those with whom he had differences. He did this so he would be better understood and so he could learn from those different views. It is an ultimate irony that a man who proclaimed, practiced and lived the life that he did was felled by a person full of hatred.

I call on all human beings to denounce hatred in thought and in deed. I call on all religious human beings to pray to the God of their choice to touch Trump’s mind and soul to cleanse him of his hatred and to replace that hatred with the love that Jesus of Nazareth championed in his words, deeds and ministry.

It is against all common sense to have the elected leader of one of the world’s most spiritually oriented nations to publicly espouse words of hatred or to hold such views in private.

Are we not the nation that believes in the shining mansion on the hill? In the better Angels of our nature? In neighbor helping neighbor or sharing with the less fortunate?

Hatred in all its forms and in any pronouncement has no place in civil discourse or human action. Hatred is the provenance of the Devil. Hatred is the provenance of the dark, dangerous and deadly side of the human condition.

A person cannot espouse hatred as Trump did and be a Christian. To use such vile words of hatred as he did means that he can only be a hypocrite in the fundamental sense of that word.

In those few words, Trump gave the world a rather broad and unsavory look at the workings of his mind, a mind that has a deep, broad and potentially dangerous bent toward hatred.

All of those who have supported Trump must undertake an examination of that support in light of the nature and depth of his hatred and in view of how that hatred conflicts with the oath of office he took as president of the United States of America and in view of the social contract that oath demands.

In words and in deeds, I hope every human being will rise above the current divisions and strive for a better, more peaceful, more just and less dangerous and destructive world.

– Hal Mansfield, Green Valley, Ariz.