I strive mightily not to hate the stupid, but they make it so very hard sometimes. I do mean the mentally impaired or developmentally challenged, I mean the stupid. In my usage, stupidity is not the same as a general lack of intellectual sophistication; stupidity is that lack paired with delusions of grandeur about one's own intelligence. Those who aren't very bright are not stupid, only those who aren't very bright & yet think themselves blindingly luminous.
To-night, I was confronted with a very stupid man preaching hatred in the name of the Almighty. He confesses himself to be a man of no great intellectual heft, & yet he qualifies as stupid because he repeats as Gospel truth every self-described Christian apologist's opinions, no matter how half-baked or anti-Scriptural. His latest gem: all Jews are atheists. The Jews are the world's greatest atheists, because they deny the Christ. He repeated discarded & discredited late Mediaeval & early modern anti-Semitism as if it was new & novel, as if the beastly fellow from whom he cribbed the idea had thought it up all on his own—the first man in history to have the divinely-inspired notion. For the last six months I have been involved in a retreat organization called Christ Renews His Parish (C.R.H.P., or "Chirp"). This man, this self-denying anti-Semite, had been appointed to a position of some authority within "Chirp" by our pastoral vicar, our parish priest. I only hope that Father does not know what truly lies in this stupid man's heart. C.R.H.P. has been a marvelous, sacramental experience, but now I am questioning whether my involvement in it is moral, or if I've been horribly deceived into being a part of something evil & ungodly.
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