Chaplain's Corner

By now we are all aware of the new museum that is being built at the Forks in Winnipeg: the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. Many of us have watched as it’s edifice has taken shape and we have heard over the last few years many stories on the news about this world class museum that is being built right here in Manitoba. It will have a number of galleries and one of the permanent galleries will be dedicated to the Holocaust, the genocide of nearly two-thirds of the Jewish people that lived in Europe before the war began. Six million Jewish people, systematically tortured and murdered by the Nazi regime for no other reason than he hated their ethnicity and spiritual tradition.

April 19th is Holocaust Remembrance Day. As difficult and heart rending as it is to remember the six million Jewish people that were murdered during World War 2, it is important that we do so, because genocide is not an historic reality, but an ever present one that plays itself out in our world somewhere, almost every day.

Most of us falsely imagine that our popular news outlets tell us what is happening in our world. Sadly, they tell us a few things that happen in our world, but our Canadian news agencies: CBC, CTV, Global; and the American networks: CNN, ABC, CBS, NNBC and FOX are guilty of the same sin of omission. Some editor in some office in each of these organizations determines what will be told and what won’t be told. I don’t know their reasons and who am I to judge the reasons, but I know that so much happens in our world that we either are not told about or only told about long after the fact, because someone decides that it is not relevant to our lives.

OK, maybe the systematic murder of some group of people in China has little impact on your day to day existence. But did you know that since World War 2, some 60 million people have been murdered in 9 countries in Asia, Europe and Africa? Sixty million people, that is nearly twice the population of Canada and did we even know it was happening? Do we even care that it is still happening?

How do we know what the impact might be? I wonder how many amazing musicians, or ground breaking inventor, or scientists who might have lead the way to some incredible medical breakthrough never lived to do their work because of the murderous hatred of some against the group of people they just happened to be born into?

Or, can you even begin to imagine the kind of trauma that changed the course of millions more lives because of this kind of murderous hatred. Ordinary folks like you and I whose lives were forever altered because a father was taken away in the night and never heard of again, or a mother was viciously raped then killed in front of her children just to drive fear deeper into the souls of those who are left alive.

So what does all this have to do with the work of a small hospital chaplain in southeastern Manitoba? Lots!  Each person is born with the seeds of hatred, that at times grow into genocide, in their hearts. Whether we are willing to admit it or not, if we were placed in the right context, under the right pressures this latent hatred that is part of our depraved natures could be fanned into the fervent heat of hatred that could lead any one of us to do the vilest of acts against another person or group of people. I have no illusions about the depths to which I know I could sink, if placed in the right situation under the right conditions.

The place to check this capacity is long, long before we would ever find ourselves in such a situation. It is checking the seeds of hatred that we sometimes find growing in our hearts towards one other person, or a group of people that prevents us from becoming murderers. I have found that several things are necessary to check the growth of this kind of hatred in our own hearts.

The first is to come face to face with the depths of our own capacity for evil. The Christian tradition calls this becoming aware of or convicted of our own utter depravity. Utter depravity is not that I am as bad as I could possibly be, but that I have the capacity to be as bad as I could possibly be. Utter depravity is the potential for evil that dwells within each person ever born. But  my experience in the Christian tradition is that few people who embrace the Christian tradition ever allow this conviction to settle to the very depth of their soul. The less we believe we could be guilt of the less profound the forgiving grace of God will be perceived. It is my sense that few Canadian Christians have even begun to reckon with the depth of their capacity of sinning (their utter depravity). This is the first step though towards preventing such genocidal hatred from ever gripping our own souls.

The second step is to ask God, through the work of Jesus on the cross to make us new creatures, to change us, in place within us his holiness. Some theologies cal this being “saved” or “regenerated” or “converted” what one calls it is not that important, but having God do his re-creative work in our souls is essential to prevent us from ever becoming part of this kind of hatred.

The third step I have found revolutionizing is to intentionally cross all the boundaries between myself and different groups of people that I have been raised to view as culturally or spiritually suspect. I was raised in an environment of intense hatred for all Catholics. The environment that I was raised in viewed Catholic people as hell bound heretics. But when I was in high school, I became friends with and eventually became personally involved with a Catholic girl.

This involvement took me into a Catholic church every week for nearly a year on Saturday evenings where I attended the Folk Mass for which she played guitar. My affection for this girl made it easy for me to cross that boundary and demonstrated to me that what I was told and what I feared about Catholics was not categorically true. My life has been significantly enriched over the years by many a Catholic Christian. All because I was willing to cross the boundary and learn for myself that all that I had been told was not true – since then the suspicion that underlies hatred no longer exists in my heart.

I wonder what other groups we may bear suspicion about; maybe it is First Nations folks, or Muslim folks, or people from a culture that is very different from the one you grew up in. Maybe like me the suspicions were laid in your heart towards people of another religious tradition, even another Christian denomination? Maybe those suspicions were laid down in your heart against someone from a certain country or of a particular ethnic origin? What ever those suspicions and whatever evidence that may have been provide to support those suspicions, if we do not have the courage to confront those suspicions of our heart we can easily find a quiet hatred growing in our soul that will then simple need a context to explode into murderous hatred.

And for followers of Jesus, having such hatred in our heart is every bit as serious as acting it out (see Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5-7). In my work I see these seeds beginning to germinate from time to time or as I interact with people I find that sometimes the “sickness” that is troubling them is more the fruit of hatred than some physical malady. Years of hidden hatred – bitterness – can really have a serious impact on a person’s well being.