Presbyterian Connection, Spring 2024

Connection
PRESBYTERIAN
The Presbyterian Church in Canada • presbyterian.ca ISSUE 29, SPRING 2024
Love and Hate in a Time of Fear
By Allyson Carr, Justice Ministries
We live in challenging and fearful times. It is natural (even reason- able) to be afraid given all the dire news about war, climate change and its life-endangering effects, economic uncertainty and the po- tential for nuclear catastrophe. So long as fear doesn’t control us, fear isn’t even necessarily always bad; when fear is rational, it can be a strong motivator for needed changes or actions that help keep people safe.
But fear isn’t always good for us, especially when it continues for long periods of time. When humans are under longer-term or existential threats (like war, devastating natural disasters and prolonged economic insecurity) fear can override empathy, lead- ing to impulsive and atypical ac- tions that go against a person’s core beliefs or values.
Since fear is such a powerful motivator, there are those who use it to drive wedges in society, polarizing people against each other and creating more conflict to consolidate their own power. It is easier to manipulate someone who is afraid.
History has given us too many examples to count of fear being used in this manipulative, polar- izing way—and there are plenty of current examples in ongoing conflicts that could be named as well. Any number of groups pro- moting hate will be only too happy to supply a scapegoat for people to aim their anxiety and anger at and mobilize against. It may be immigrants or refugees that such groups place blame on. It may be people of a different skin colour than your own or people with a different gender expression or sexual orientation than your own. It may be someone of a different faith or from a different area. But in each case, the language that groups who promote hate use will be similar: they are taking what is ours and they will keep doing it
unless we stop them. Such lan- guage leads people to question the relationship between their rights and others’ rights: If others get additional rights and privileges that I already have, will I actually have fewer? Will I lose out?
Whatever the target (and often it’s a combination of several tar- gets), groups who thrive on hate have a tried-and-true road to pow- er—and power is their ultimate goal. They prey on people’s under- standable fears about a personal matter (their own safety, their chil- dren’s lives, their home or future) to turn people against a vulnerable scapegoat the group has identi- fied. Drawing on misinformation or oversimplifications, they claim this scapegoat is the source of the threat to you, your family, your future or even sometimes the na- tion. (That is the route nationalism tends to take, for example.)
Often groups promoting hate will use language that is innocu- ous or even good in other con- texts. They will say they support “family values,” “freedom,” even “faith” to describe themselves and make it more difficult to spot the hate and harm they are promoting. They will say they are “protecting your rights.” But anyone who treats rights as a zero-sum game—where if oth- ers who are different from you are powerful or safe or have their needs met, it only comes at your expense—is not walking a path of loving their neighbour. Neither are they demonstrating a love of God, no matter how many faith-related words they use; God did not and does not direct us to “Love the Lord and look out for yourselves.” When Jesus gave the parable of the Good Samaritan, he did not add, “But only love your neigh-
bour if they look or act or think like you.”
It’s easy and tempting to think that “we” (whoever each of us is) are too smar t to be manipulated by fear, but we are all fallible crea- tures and we are all vulnerable to it. Looking at our national statistics, one can see the alarm bells: Anti- Semitic and Islamophobic hate crimes are rising; anti-immigrant sentiment is star ting to creep into public dialogue; hate crimes against People of Colour remain high. These are all products of scapegoating allowing hate to take root. Scapegoating has never yet made anyone safer, and when hate is being offered as the solution to our fears, deadly violence is not far behind. We have seen this again and again and it is not the way we are called to live.
So, as we read or listen to the news, as we talk with our friends
or family, as we consider the ac- tions of our politicians when it comes time to vote, or the places where we spend our money and time—even when we worship—it is important to listen closely to what is being said and to weigh it. Am I, with my action and my inaction, participating in loving my neighbour? Or am I allowing, even encouraging my neighbour to be marginalized and targeted? Am I contributing to love or hate (or apathy, which can be just as harmful)?
In times like these, it is even more important to remember what Christians are called to. The only way to counter hate is through fulsome love, service to the vulnerable and marginalized, and caring—those same values we see embodied in the gospels, in the person and ministry of Jesus Christ.
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