Thread by @realjamesowen

A thread:

They say conservatives hate people.
They’re wrong.

What I hate is the lie stealing children from God’s hands.

I don’t hate anyone.
I used to.
But I laid that weapon down.

Now I carry grief and righteous wrath.

I hate the whisper in a teenager’s ear:
“God made you wrong.”

That whisper grows into a storm,
until a boy stares into the bathroom mirror
and sees nothing but a mistake.

I hate that little girls,
with laughter still in their voices,
are told to carve themselves into something “better.”

As if the same hands that stitched galaxies
slipped when He stitched them.

I hate that children…
with lunchboxes, scraped knees, and bedtime prayers…
are told their identity is theirs to invent.

When the truth was written before their first heartbeat:
“You are mine and I know thee.”

I hate the ruins this ideology leaves behind:

Pill bottles rattling in drawers.
tear-streaked notes hidden under mattresses.

Nooses formed in bedrooms where laughter used to live.

I hate that classrooms echo with silence
because a child believed the lie so deeply
they picked up a gun and turned it on the innocent.

I don’t hate the people.
I pray for them.
I ache for them.

Because they are prisoners of a lie
that convinces them chains are wings.

Hatred leaves blood on the floors of schools.
Hatred leaves nooses swinging in empty rooms.
Hatred shatters the hearts of fathers, mothers, and families
hearts that never stop breaking.

But love?
Real love doesn’t lie.
Real love fights for the truth that could have saved them.

And here’s the truth:
God never makes mistakes.

He didn’t make one with you.
And He sent imperfect men like me
to scream into the darkness you’re in,
to drag you toward His light.

And that
I will never apologize for.