Last night I saw this video spotlighting the pastor of a local Baptist church who responded to the recent, horrific shootings in an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida by praising in his "sermon" the killings and wishing that all gays in this country would be rounded up by the federal government and executed by firing squads.
My initial reaction was extreme anger, and I immediately took to Google and Yelp to post the following review of his "sermon," even though many others had beaten me to the punch:
FYI, Roger Jimenez, the monstrous example of a "man of the cloth" that heads this church, is on record (which you can find on YouTube) for praising the killings in the Orlando nightclub Sunday morning and for saying that the federal government should round up every gay person in the country, put them against a wall, and "blow their brains out." This makes the late Fred Phelps sound like a sweetheart by comparison! Is this the kind of church you want to attend, and, if it is, what does this say about YOU?
I actually wanted to say far more. I wanted to say things that could conceivably have brought me to the attention of local law enforcement, especially if Jimenez or his church subsequently met with any kind of violence. That's how angry I was at the outset.
But in time I managed to cool down and let my longstanding perspective on human mentation and behavior take hold. This perspective is that everything we think, feel, and do is ultimately the result of interacting biological, psychological, social, and cultural factors we do not consciously choose, and so we are ultimately not "responsible" for them.
Thus, "Pastor" Jimenez's virulently vile remarks against the Orlando victims and against LGBT individuals in general arise from complex internal and environmental conditions for which he can't rightly be blamed and for which he, therefore, shouldn't be despised and vindictively persecuted. Instead, we should feel compassion for him as a victim of those conditions even as we condemn his remarks.
But then how should this condemnation of his remarks play out? That is, how should we voice our condemnation, and what should we seek to accomplish with it?
I think this guy has amply proven himself unfit to be preaching the Christian gospel. But is that my call, as a non-Christian, to make? Should individual Christians and the Christian community as a whole take a public stand against this pastor's words and against his pastoral fitness the way many Christians say that all Muslims should publicly condemn all atrocities and hate speech coming from radical Muslims?
So far, I don't see any Christian uprising against this guy, and I'd be very surprised if I ever do. I asked one prominent Christian apologist in the GOD group what he thinks about this. He may surprise me, but I expect a tepid response from him at best.
Should the federal government, as some have suggested, revoke the tax-exempt status of Jimenez's church, and, if so, under what legal provisions?
I think individual Christians and the Christian community as a whole should condemn this man's virulent message of hate in the strongest terms. If they fail to do so, I'd consider them worse than remiss. I'd consider them enablers of malignant hatred in a Christian guise.
And who knows to what future acts of horrendous violence the propagation and perpetuation of such hatred could lead?
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