It’s always strange, those moments where you read or hear something that distills your random ideas into one clear thought. I had one of those moments reading this editorial by Nicholas D. Kristof:

If the latest in the “Left Behind” series of evangelical thrillers is to be believed, Jesus will return to Earth, gather non-Christians to his left and toss them into everlasting fire:

“Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again.”

These are the best-selling novels for adults in the United States, and they have sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. The latest is “Glorious Appearing,” which has Jesus returning to Earth to wipe all non-Christians from the planet. It’s disconcerting to find ethnic cleansing celebrated as the height of piety.

If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of “Glorious Appearing” and publish it in Saudi Arabia, jubilantly describing a massacre of millions of non-Muslims by God, we would have a fit. We have quite properly linked the fundamentalist religious tracts of Islam with the intolerance they nurture, and it’s time to remove the motes from our own eyes.

I read this and wanted to yell, “Yes! Yes! That’s it precisely!”

I find it quite disturbing that there are millions of people out there who not just believe that I and others will be cast into the fiery pits of hell, but are happy about this. Especially as these are the people who gleefully brand all Muslims as bloodthirsty monsters who behead Christians.

Close-mindedness has never been a trait I admire, but close-mindedness that revels in the suffering of others–sounds far more like mental illness and innate cruelty than the love of God described by Jesus in the New Testament.