By ROBERT JUMPER
Tutiyi (Snowbird) and Clyde, N.C.
“Hate the sin. Love the sinner.” That is a phrase I have heard since I was a toddler. The adage implies it is never okay to devalue a person, even if we may disagree with their behavior. I have struggled with that philosophy all my life. After all, when a person is disagreeable and hate-filled toward me, my first thought isn’t, “Wow, I hate those actions”. My thought is, “What a miserable person he/she is” (using more kind language to protect innocent ears). Our thoughts almost immediately, in many cases, turn to retaliation. Very few have the presence of mind to consider reconciliation when in the heat of battle or after a first physical or emotional blow has damaged us.
I have always been fascinated by the stories of our veterans of foreign wars. These incredible men and women have done and seen things in battle that we cannot even fathom and certainly cannot relate to. Throughout time, war has pitted man against man in a cause that is ideology against ideology. It is an enormous emotional and philosophical dilemma for individuals with any kind of moral/ethical code. War is almost always a fight to the death of either persons or governmental powers. Dueling, for example, was an accepted way for many years around the world to settle disputes among individuals. A verbal slur against one man’s integrity was seen as a good cause to either take another man’s life or lose your own.
One story that struck me was that of Diana Oestreich, who was a Combat Medic in the 724th Engineering Battalion during the Iraq War. She wrote an article describing her experience with battle both in Iraq and at home regarding war. First, she describes a meeting with her commander and fellow soldiers, highlighting her struggle with the concept of loving people and hating actions.
“The commander went on to describe a tactic the enemy used to interrupt the American invasion. They would push Iraqi children in front of military convoys; when the trucks slowed or stopped to avoid hitting the children, the enemy would attack the last trucks in the convoy. Being at the end of the convoy made the soldiers sitting ducks; they couldn’t move forward to get away, and with no other trucks behind them, they were easily ambushed. The commander barked over the voices of a hundred soldiers in the tent, I repeat: If you slow the convoy to avoid harming a child, you will be responsible for your battle buddies getting ambushed. If anybody can’t do their duty and protect their battle buddies, stand up now and identify yourself. His words hung in the air, suspended by a growing feeling of dread. I wasn’t sure I could run over a child to obey this direct order from my commander. I believed in sacrificing to serve my country, even taking a life to save a life, but this? This pricked my conscience. I knew it wasn’t an option to stand up and say- as the lone female soldier in the company- that I wouldn’t put the lives of my battle buddies first and do my duty. It would be a betrayal. But getting up the next day and choosing to run over a child didn’t feel possible either.”
She talks about her faith and the revelation that killing can’t be a part of loving. So, she chose not to carry a weapon for the remainder of her tour of duty, a total of 397 days. When she finished and returned home, she had a different perspective and different priorities based on her revelation. It became more important to love than to be “right”.
“Waging peace looks a lot different back home than it did on the battlefield of Iraq. As a little family, we committed to showing up for anyone and everyone if they asked, blackmailing ourselves to love first and asking questions later. This meant that the usual strings attached to who we showed up for, like agreement, sharing the same faith or politics, or being friends -would no longer apply. Choosing love first meant everyone would be in our jurisdiction to love. No one would be outside of our ‘yes’. When a group in our community raised their hand and asked people to show up for them when violence hits them, we would do it. We decided that we would be the first to love, every single time. We were going to throw kindness around like confetti, to love like it was growing on trees, without needing to determine if the person in front of us deserved it or not. We stopped talking about what peace might mean and started being the peace that our neighbors and community needed. We did it because peace isn’t the absence of conflict; it’s showing up in the middle of it. Waging peace meant our faith was no longer a weapon used to divide ‘us’ from’ them.” (Diana Oestreich, “Why I laid down my gun in the middle of a war”, Fellowship Magazine, March 22, 2024)
Aren’t we all guilty of painting people with their opinions and judging their worthiness based on how their ideology fits our personal scorecards? Topics like politics and religion may be so volatile that the slightest mention can turn fast friends into permanent enemies. We find the most innocuous “things” to hate people over. We hate over the color of skin whether red, black, brown, or, yes, even white. We hate over race. Within our own tribe, we hate those who don’t seem as “Indian” as we think they should be, calling them slurs like “coconut”.
Many times, we allow our convictions over ideology to turn into or be perceived as hating people. And surely there is a fine line between disagreement with thoughts and hating of flesh. Some actions are so egregious or heinous that the stain of actions marks an individual for life, as in the case of a serial killer, for example. But most of our day-to-day challenges are more subtle. “He is a Republican, and she is a Democrat: He is from a federally recognized tribe, and she is from a group that is not: He supports Jewish people, and she supports Palestinian people: He backs the Braves, and she supports the Maroon Devils.” Labels themselves may be catalysts for hate because any generalization will make it easier to hate on a bigger scale. In my experience, there are very few “diehard” people. As you go through a list of identifying characteristics of a group of people, you don’t have to go far down that list to find a difference of opinion between those in the group.
Like Specialist Oestreich, we all must come to the realization that hating or disagreeing with actions doesn’t have to mean hating the person holding them. And if there are ways to first love the people, to set that as the initiating factor in a relationship, maybe that would make it easier to find common ground on issues and ideologies. Surely, it would at least help us to communicate with each other so that if agreement isn’t possible, maybe peace could be achieved.
The dream that Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., shared in 1963 is greatly to be sought by all.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
