HATE IS AN ACTION

It is often said that LOVE is an action. It is not something we feel. It is not an emotion, pulsing through our being. LOVE is evidenced by what we do and what we say. 

When you love, you sacrifice.  You encourage. You give. You forgive. You feed, you clothe. You educate yourself and others. You shelter, you defend. You welcome the stranger. You heal. You hold your tongue. You face the truth with humility. You speak the truth with love. You listen. You tolerate. You are patient. You are kind. You are gentle. You exercise self-control. You do not mock or ridicule. You refuse to treat others with disrespect even if they don’t respect you. 

You look for the best in people and celebrate it. You see the worst in people and you come alongside them and help them out of it. You do not condemn. You do not reject utterly. You do not accept blindly. You preach the Gospel from your heart. You are humble. You are brave. You accept responsibility when it’s your fault and sometimes even when it’s not.  You make amends. You are fair. You apologize and you change. You are honest with others. You are honest with yourself.  You challenge your conscience before you accuse others. You love out of your own weakness so you can show mercy. You love out of your own strength so you can bear burdens.  

What is often not said is that HATE is also an action. It, too, is no pulsating emotion. When we hate we seldom register a feeling strong enough to identify it for what it is. In fact, we will often say, “I don’t hate anyone. I love everybody.” But HATE is revealed in what we say and do as clearly as is LOVE. 

When you hate you look out only for yourself and the people who look like you and think like you. You criticize. You hold back. You hold grudges and remember wrongs. You gorge yourself but let others starve. You clothe yourself but leave others naked. You are willing to leave others in ignorance or judge them stupid because they think differently. You are willing to remain ignorant rather than open your mind to new ideas. You leave others out in the cold. You attack. You cast out the stranger. You leave others to suffer in sickness and disease. You blurt out whatever you’re thinking regardless of who it hurts and you call it free speech. You deny or avoid the truth about yourself out of pride. You speak the truth about others with cruelty and call yourself righteous for doing so. You refuse to listen. You are intolerant, but you call yourself principled. You are impatient but you call yourself determined or you blame others for not living up to your standards. You are unkind but you cannot see the pain you cause and you accept no responsibility when you do. You are harsh in your words and callous in your actions. You have no self-control because you are governed by emotions masquerading as righteousness. You mock. You ridicule. You flaunt your disrespect for your enemies.  

You seek out the worst news about the people you don’t like or agree with and then feed upon it like a ravenous dog so you can spread the information and you have no regard for whether or not it is true. You discover good things about those same people and you downplay it, deny it or simply double down on the bad stuff so you can continue to denigrate them. You set yourself up as judge and then claim it’s God’s will. You cut people off utterly and refuse to listen or consider their cause if they don’t look like you or believe like you. You accept others blindly, and refuse to stand up to their corruption and injustice because they look like you and believe like you. You preach the Gospel from your hand; and your hand is, more often than not, balled into a fist. You are proud. You are fearful. Your apologies are empty rhetoric devoid of sincerity because you are not really sorry or penitent, and you have no intention to change. You are deceptive with others and you live a double standard. You are deceptive with yourself because you cannot even see the double standard you live by. You are quick to challenge others but delay or avoid challenging yourself. You hate from your own weakness so you demonstrate fear and contempt. You hate from your strength so you demonstrate selfishness and cruelty. 

We all hate. Every one of us. We do it with such skill, such ease and such deep denial that we cannot or will not see that we are hating at all. I have heard Christians claim to “love everybody” and then immediately begin casting aspersions on some group or politician as if gossip or innuendo constituted proof. I have seen those same people confronted with actual proof or good or bad and been unable to accept it when the good is applied to an enemy and the bad is applied to a friend. And I must, if I am ever to be truly loving, confess that I am guilty of the very same thing. 

Here is a test. Read the Love list again and every time you tell yourself you are loving on a certain point, picture someone you loved that way. Did you picture a friend? An ally? A likeminded person? More than likely you did. Now read the hate list again. Every time you tell yourself, “I never do that,” stop. Think again. Have you not perhaps done that very thing to an enemy or perhaps been accused of that very thing by one who opposes you? Is your first impulse to justify having done it or to spin it so it doesn’t look quite so hateful?

The problem is not that we do not love. The problem is that we do not love our enemies. The problem is not that we hate. It is that we love our hatred so dearly. And so we either cannot see that we hate or we know we hate but we are seduced by the false righteousness that contempt affords us. Nothing makes one stand taller than when one stands on the neck of an enemy.  Or that is what hate would have us think. But then it doesn’t call itself hate, it calls itself justice or righteousness. And so hate wears the white hat of the righteous and we do not see that it is a thief. We do not see that it has stolen our witness, it has defiled our testimony of the goodness of God and the victory of the risen Lord. Oh, how empty are our coffers in heaven because we hate! The love you deny your enemy is wasted wealth in the kingdom. The love we lavish upon them is treasure multiplied both in this life and in the next.

To defeat hate we must love. But it we cannot only love the lovable. We cannot only love those who are good to us. We cannot only love those who agree with us. And we cannot wait to love them only after they have come around to our side of things. We cannot love only those who love us. Nor can we only love those who will look out for us and have our backs.

Hate will only die when we love the deplorable. We must love those who persecute us. We must love those with we disagree so fully as to find them despicable. We must love them before we win them over and, yes, even love them if we never win them over. We must love those who revile and persecute us. We must love them even when they kill us.

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.  If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that?  And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

-Matthew 5: 43-48