Love Them All

Love them all, and let God sort them out.

A reversal of the phrase “Kill them all, and let God sort them out” which has a violent, religious and military history. The phrase originated in the Albigensian Crusade when Pope Innocent III ordered the crusade against the Cathari religious movement, because the Pope deemed them heretical.

The Crusaders captured Béziers, France, and when a papal legate was asked how the Crusaders should distinguish the heretics from true Christians, the legate answered, “Kill them all. God will know his own.” The result was a massacre of nearly everyone in the city. Variations of this phrase have even made their way into the modern soldier’s lexicon.

So, we have that backdrop of what happens when religion and military align in monstrous ways, and we also have our present moment in which some Christians weaponize and decontextualize a handful of scriptures to vilify and push the LGBTQ community out of Christian communion.

Christ presented a better way when he commanded us to love others, including our enemies. Ultimately, God will be the judge of others, but He will also certainly judge us for how we did or did not love them. Therefore, Love them all, and let God sort them out.