Canada: Praying publicly and reading from the Bible is preaching hate?



We read:
"Tensions have erupted between residents of an east-Toronto neighbourhood and a church group accused of preaching hate outside the home of a local same-sex couple.

Over the weekend about a dozen parishioners were confronted by about 10 residents of the street. Local resident Geoff Skelding captured the moment on video and posted it to YouTube -- allegedly after the group prayed outside the home of the gay couple and condemned them as sinners.

The confrontation took place in the Leslieville neighbourhood near Dundas Street East and Greenwood Avenue. It's the same community where the church, Highfield Road Gospel Hall, is located.

In the description of the video he posted to YouTube, Skelding said the parishioners have been active in the area for years. "Apparently they have been grouping in front of a couple's house and reading their bible loudly for the past 7 years," he wrote.

Source

I guess noisy preaching and praying could be annoying but the underlying Christian teaching that moves the group is to hate the sin but love the sinner. And if you can't hate sin, that's about the end of Christianity.

The people concerned are clearly ones with very strong Biblical beliefs and are trying in fact to save the souls of the sinners, not trying to project hate at them. They are just practicing their religion. And the Bible-based religion concerned is the sort that America was founded upon.

If they gathered before my house and endeavored to save me from my atheism, I would go up to them, shake them by the hand, thank them for their good work, assure them that they will get a blessing from their Lord for it, but tell them that I have thought about it long enough for them to be wasting their time on me and suggesting that they find someone who is more likely to respond to their efforts.

And whatever result that had, at least I would be setting an example of Christian behavior and not projecting hate at THEM!

And I am not fantasizing about treating Christians fundamentalists civilly. When Jehovah's Witnesses call at my door, I always greet them in a friendly manner and immediately ask them if they have put out any useful reference books on the Bible recently. That throws them completely off track and we simply move on to a civil discussion of their reference publications. I even buy something sometimes. Some of their books can be quite useful in finding Bible texts relevant to a given subject.

"Do unto others ...." is a pretty useful rule of behavior even for an old atheist like me. It's a rule that works well for everyone as far as I can see. But I am a conservative atheist. It's sad that Leftists seem to be too full of hate to use that rule too.

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