Monday, June 13, 2016

What a Hate Crime Looks Like

For the longest time we have been redefining what words mean. We have been watering down and nullifying words that anger, challenge, or irritate us, and we have been twisting others to make them suit our preconceived notions or ideas.

It’s gotten so bad that if anyone, perchance a baker refused to make a cake depicting two men holding hands while a astride phallic shaped rocket, it was labeled a hate crime; something heretofore unseen and unheard of.

Unfortunately, less than a day ago we saw the true definition of a hate crime, and it had nothing to do with refusing to validate a certain lifestyle, or insisting that certain practices are sinful in the sight of God.

Fifty people are dead. They will never see another sunrise, they will never watch another sunset, and every hope and dream they had died along with them. A man of Muslim persuasion walked into a place where these individuals congregated and simply opened fire. It wasn’t a Methodist, it wasn’t a Southern Baptist, it wasn’t even one of those intolerant Pentecostals that did this heinous thing. It was a twenty-nine-year-old Muslim man.

I need to point this out because once the spinners get to spinning one is apt to believe that he was influenced by Christian intolerance, and if not for Christianity this nice Muslim boy would never have thought of doing such a thing.

Let’s be honest here. Cards on the table, nothing up our sleeve sort of honest. Christians simply don’t do this, and even the world knows it. The worst you can expect of any Christian, a true Christian regardless of their denomination, is telling someone that their lifestyle is sinful and that they need to repent. I cannot embrace, validate, or champion your lifestyle, but never once have I wished death upon anybody for it. Christians don’t want to see sinners dead. Christians want to see sinners saved. That is one of the marked differences between the Christian faith and Islam.

You can keep calling it a religion of peace if you like, you can keep insisting that all Muslims are peace loving peoples who embrace diversity and allow for differing viewpoints, but the bodies are starting to pile up, and eventually there will be so many that even the most ardent defender and proponent of the ‘religion of peace’ narrative will have to backpedal just a smidgen.

To those who thought that someone refusing to bake a cake, or cater a wedding amounted to a hate crime, may I humbly submit that this is what a hate crime really looks like, and it’s evil and insidious and cruel and final. Hurt feelings does not a hate crime make. Dead people does.

Loss of life is always a painful thing to witness, especially loss of life on such a grand scale. If I were to say this was an outlier, an exception to the rule and something that will not repeat, I would simply be paying you lip service when all evidence pointed to the contrary.


The evident truth is that such things will continue to occur, and chances are better than good that they will increase in frequency. Next time it may not be a club, but it will be something public, and populated, and frequented by a large swath of people, because in the minds of those who decide they will take as many lives as they possibly can on any given day a dead infidel is a dead infidel whether they are young or old, educated or simpleminded, an individual of means or the lowliest of paupers. 

With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr. 

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