I probably should have posted this a week ago– it would have saved me some amusing but pointless interactions with some extremely angry and vulgar people.  The Matt Powell who says that gays should be put to death is not me.  That is a whole different person.  I do not believe that.  I don’t really mind hate mail very much, but I’d much rather it be for things I’ve actually written and said myself.

This young man is 22 years old, and clearly should not be a pastor.  He is obviously a novice and the Bible forbids putting a novice in office, lest he be lifted up in pride.  But really, there’s 2 billion people in the world that name the name of Christ.  Statistically, there will always be some crazy knucklehead saying something.  I’m pretty sure the number of Christians who believe gays should be put to death is significantly less than the number of atheists who think I should be killed for being a Christian, especially if the last week is evidence of anything.

There’s been a number of things about this that I’ve found rather remarkable.  One of them is that people who are angry about anti-gay comments so frequently use anti-gay epithets themselves to criticize.  Most of the attacks I’ve received in the last week have been of the rather vicious homosexual slur variety.  So that’s interesting.

But even more interesting is the number of people who think it’s somehow profitable, somehow going to achieve anything positive, to find someone on the Internet and say horrible things about them because you disagree with something they said.  At a ratio of about 20 to 1, the vast majority of these comments I’ve received on my blog, on my church site, even phone calls I have received, have been intensely hostile, vulgar, and abusive.  They were not trying to convince me of anything.  Nobody would even read any of those comments but me.  They were just trying to hurt.  Now given that I wasn’t even the right person, and I have a pretty thick skin by now about strangers hating me on the Internet, it didn’t really bother me much, but the only thing it convinced me of is to provide evidence for the proposition that atheists and leftists are horrible people.  Now thankfully, I know some atheists and leftists who are very kind people, at least in person, so I know not to paint with a broad brush based on a handful of kooks on the Internet.  I’m just curious to know what kind of mindset would think that this is a profitable use of time.  They’ve all said what a terrible hateful person I am, but how are they doing anything to reduce the amount of hatred in the world?