. . . it has more to do with the fact that I think hate has become the misunderstood villain in a bad movie. We've failed to sympathize with hate, let alone empathize with it. We've failed to develop it's character for a fair presentation. We've failed to accept it. We've failed to embrace it, when we need to. All in all, we've failed to love our good neighbor, hate.
You don't know what I'm talking about, most likely. How can this bastard put hate on his roster board of virtues? Well, I guess we could go all of the way back to the beginning and talk about how G_d hates the devil and all that, but I think we can pick a more contemporary beginning: Apologetics.
Sure, sure, I'm a fan of C.S. Lewis. I'm also entitled to think he was a bit of a pussy. I've thought the same of myself, when I tried to rationalize my beliefs to those who do not share them. I've looked back on my attempts to appeal to questions that were asked in a certain way and had a prickle of regret scuttle across my scrotum as it drew walnut tight. In an imperfect world, accountability is not as universal as you might think it is. The only people that anybody needs to explain their beliefs or their actions, in relation to their beliefs, is other people who claim the same belief set. This doesn't just go for Christians. It goes for everybody. If a non-believer confronts you about what you believe, you have no reason to dignify them with a polite response. Why? You don't need to justify yourself. We live in a world that does not have to justify itself to us, yet we are constantly interrogated and persecuted. It's a double standard, and to use that hypocrisy to call you out on what they perceive as yours is nothing short of a hoodwink. Why be a party to it? Especially if you say you're a Christian or follower of Christ; a man who instructed us to be in the world but not of it? If you're confronted by a non-believer about your faith, you have every right to be reflexively combative. If they ask you to justify a certain point, feel more than free to point-out to them that it's politically incorrect for them to have to do the same for you, so if they're curious about what you believe, they can find a more honest and less pride-driven, insecure and passive-aggressive way to entertain their curiosities about your world. But we don't do this. We feel pigeon-holed into explaining ourselves to people who we do not answer to. We feel this every day and we cave-in to the weight of those feelings. This, among other things, has distorted how we view love.
The other great distortion comes from, I think, the postmodern synthesis of human emotion into something of material import. Human feelings have become a commodity in the modern, western social and philosophical dialectic. Political correctness is an almost universal paradigm in modern, western culture. Emotion is, somehow, sublime and seems to be at the center of the American and European thought process. But why? Feelings are fleeting! I've even been recently quoted as saying, "Peoples' feelings are supposed to get hurt. That's why G_d designed them to be passing." Still, who you offend seems to matter quite a bit these days. How you offend them matters just as much, if not more. So, is it any surprise that people have come to confuse love with a euphoric emotion? Yes, love can be a sure catalyst for this euphoric emotion but love is not this emotion, in and of itself. Love is a resolute decision to give someone or something priority over almost everything else, if not everything else altogether.
In a world where love is an emotion that makes you want to sing, laugh or involve your genitals with fluid, hate is just bad feelings. Hate is what offends. Hate is the opposite of love. Love makes me feel good (especially when my genitals are involved with fluid) so hate makes me feel bad. G_d is love, so hate must be really bad. Ha ha. Well, if G_d is just a good feeling, the Holy Spirit is a pretty capricious little slut. Isn't she? Fair weather friend to the end. But, if G_d is love, then that's impossible. The Holy Spirit must be with us all the time, whether or not it feels that great. So, we must be wrong about love.
I'm right, we're all wrong. Excuse the hubris (not that I'm really asking for you to excuse me.)
My third observation would be that Dispensationalism has contributed to the Christian misconceptions about love and hate, specifically. Most Christians, especially so-called Evangelicals, tend to forget the old testament existed until a Charelton Heston movie is on T.V. Do I have a problem with the New Testament? No, not entirely. I will, however, acknowledge that it is replete with punditry. The Old Testament is based almost entirely on actual accounts. Whether you believe these accounts to be fantastical or historical is completely irrelevant. The point is that the Old Testament is comprised largely of narrative accounts. Straightforward, even if not firsthand. The New Testament has some stories, yes. Quite a bit of the New Testament, however, is comprised of letters and sermons. The problem lies in the fact that the stuff that isn't in red print is not being said by Yehoshuah. It's being said by His Apostles. Men with fallible minds and opinions. Am I saying they're liars? No. I'm just saying that a lot of what they had to say came loaded with considerable bias. I'm saying that one should take what they say with a grain of salt. Fortunately, the entire New Testament was written by men who read the Old Testament a lot so, unless you have one of those weird New Testament only bibles, you've got your grains of salt in that really fat first half of the book in your hand.
We, however, seem to forget the Old Testament is there for anything other than adventure stories put there for us to censor and regurgitate for our children, so the young ones can have something adventurous and epic to hold their juvenile attention to the "boring, old bible". This New Testament approach has left us not only soft and diluted, but confused. We spend our time trying to follow the gospels and teachings of six-out-of-twelve apostles, and sort out the disparities between their opinions. No wonder it has become muddled into some sort of pre-digested mush we can all agree on. No wonder we've chosen the un-challenging, un-criticizable and unoffensive answers for every question.
This is what lead me to leave the church. In our search for answers for a political world, we've become a political organization. For the church, especially in a democratic west, that's a dangerous and unstable place to be.
But, what does all of this talk about love have to do with hate? Everything. To love, hating something is necessary. Not because the universe was built on extremes, but because we live in a universe that has been fractured. We live in a world that has been made imperfect. In this imperfect world, there are threats on the things and people you love. These threats can be real, perceived or merely plausible, that is, however, no reason to dismiss them. Yes, when or if you hate somebody, the risk of objectifying that person is very real. That, however, doesn't change the fact that forgiveness has nothing to do with the truth that, sometimes, a person becomes their actions. If I am striking somebody, they cannot stop my actions without stopping me. To love something, you must hate the concept of its antithesis. Without hate, love becomes corruptible, soluble and worthless, because you have no desire or passion to defend it.
Hate is not prejudice. Prejudice is a kind of hate that comes from ignorance and selfishness. Hate is not murder. Hate is the willingness to let that which you do not love die. Hate is not premeditated unforgiveness. Hate is the willingness to forgive yourself for choosing to love something first and forgive the other second.
Hate is a strong word and doesn't need to be avoided because it is strong. It needs to be avoided, so it's strength can be retained.
Vengance is the L_rd's. Anger is a sin, because we are failing to give our vengeful feelings to G_d. Grace, however, can sometimes be something we need to hand over to G_d as well. There's no point in claiming grace, when you don't understand it or when it stands between you and something you love. Love and hate are two hands on the same body, so why not keep them at two and ten when you drive?
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