A meeting with my friend

Whenever I come to my home town to visit there are a couple of friends that are on my list to see. I went over to one of their apartments on Saturday night. The evening started out fine. Talking about how things were going and then I must have said something that he wanted clarification on. I think it had to do with asking about my son and my talking about how glad I was that he was out of the service.

I made some reference to one of the main missions of the military was death and destruction as a means to achieve the end. (a side note, both he and I were in the military during the Viet Nam era but neither went to Viet Nam). That started the discourse down a path of the war in Iraq and religion. Bad place to go.

In the end of the conversation I asked him how with him being a "Christian," which is his main identity according to him,  how does his support of someone, Bush, who was into war and torturing people, and his distain for Obama, who wants to treat the world with dignity and respect, coexist? It is a question that I have often wondered. That wanting to respect all people, of seeing people as equal, as trying to spread peace through conversations instead of through war, is closer to Jesus' teachings then killing those who disagree with us. His answered scared me.

His religious teachings tell him the world is full of evil. That the United States has a responsibility to contain evil. In his view, without the containment, evil will take over the world. He sites his own classification of himself as evil because in the past he was a murderer. I think he was referring to Roe vs. Wade.

His black and white thinking and the fact that he saw himself as evil because of a few decisions in his life was scary. He spoke of not wanting to have a "world view" but a "biblical view." To him the world was an evil place, filled with evil people. On the other hand, I see the world as a wonderful place filled with good people who occasionally do bad things. Yes, there are evil or bad people, but they are the minority. I do not see the bible as mandate for whole world.

I find it ironic that I see the world as a far better place to live and see God as a more loving person than a person who sees themselves as such a Christian. The scary part was how he saw it as the United States' responsibility to police the world for and contain evil based on his view of religion.

I left thinking that I will have to do some grieving at a loss of a long time friend. I no longer feel the need to contact him as I come to my hometown. I choose not to be around someone who sees the world as such an evil place.