Today’s Scripture Reading (October
15, 2014): John 15
“Let them
hate me as long as they fear me” is noted to have been a favorite statement of Caligula,
the third Emperor of the Roman Empire, who reigned over the Empire from 37-41
C.E. The statement itself is actually a quote from the Roman author Lucius
Accius, a writer of tragedies, whose career ended over a hundred years before
Caligula’s career began. The actual Accius quote is “Let the hate, as long as
they fear.” And there was no doubt that Caligula was hated. The man seemed to
make enemies with every breath. In the mind of Caligula, the Empire only
existed to serve the needs of the Emperor, who quickly proclaimed that he was a
god. His conflicts with the Roman Senate over his short career are legendary.
Caligula dealt with everyone in a manner that reminded them that they simply
did not matter. The only opinion in the world that was of any importance was
his own. Caligula was mean and harsh, not just with his enemies, but with the
few friends that he had gathered around himself.
But while he
was hated, it is an open question as to how much he was feared. Oh, I am sure
that the Roman population feared whatever Caligula had dreamed up in his mind
to do next. But sometime hate can overcome fear – and that was a truth that
Caligula did not seem to understand. Even his name was more evidence of hate
then fear. The truth was that Caligula, the only name that we remember the
Emperor by (he was born Gaius
Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus), was
a nickname given to him in childhood. Caligula literally means “little boots”
and there might be nothing less fear inspiring then King Little Boots. Yet, as
much as the king hated the name, he didn’t seem to have it in his power to stop
the Senate and the people from using the nickname. Caligula was hated for good
reason. And that hate overcame the fear the Emperor engendered.
I struggle sometimes with
Christianity because we seem to take our cues from the wrong people. I know of
several people that might be right at home with Caligula’s quote. Sometimes we
even take pride (as I am sure that Caligula did) in the fact that we are hated.
And we will often point back to this verse. Didn’t Jesus say that we would be
hated because we follow him? But that is also the root of the problem. Yes,
Jesus said that we would be hated because we follow him. But according to Jesus,
we would be hated for no other reason than that we follow him. The hate of this
world toward Christianity is supposed to be an irrational hate. They will hate
us because they first hated the one who came to love the world. It is a hate
that should be hard to understand.
But that is part of my problem.
The world’s hate for the Christian Church would often seem to be well founded. We
are hated because we are an arrogant, self-centered and egotistical people. We
are hated because we seem to believe that we are the only ones in the world
that matter, and definitely the only ones whose opinion is in any way important.
We have learned by example, except that the example for the Christian Church
seems to have been “Little Boots” – not Christ.
The message
of Jesus was consistently that we were to serve the world. We were to actively
love it in everything that we did. And if we accomplished that, and we were
still hated, we needed to remember that the world hated him first. Maybe it is
time to leave “Little Boots” behind and begin to be hated for being the loving
community that Christ intended us to be in the first place.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: John 16
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