What if we are to love the sinner
for the sinner has a good side too?
Love the sinner and hate the sin is the Church's cosmetic. It covers up the
flaws in the hideous philosophy of Catholicism.
The saying is nearly always given in the form of a command. When that happens,
it does not really help at all. You would need to show people how to love the
sinners and hate the sins. Commands are about forcing and pressuring people.
Commands are veiled threats.
There is another way the command is put, “Love the sinner for see the whole
person and not just the hateful sin which is only a small part of them”. It is
denial of the obvious fact that once you sin you can’t do real good and all is
sin and that sin or evil reflects the kind of person you are. You do evil
because you are evil. It is actually worse to do good in a state of sin than to
do harm for the person who pretends to love is worse than the one who brazenly
hates. At least the brazen one sees the evil in all its horror and can make
informed decisions about what to do. Acting good and not being really good is
more seductive and self-deceiving than open evil. To do false good soon makes
you unable to see how sinful you are and Jesus said that this kind of sinner is
the worst off and needs the most help. He spoke to such sinners scathingly even
without provocation and his excuse was that it was the only way that might make
them see (Matthew 23).
The Roman Catholic Church teaches that you can commit something called mortal
sin. This is a sin that implies total rejection of God. You expel the saving
presence of God from yourself. Those who die in mortal sin go to Hell for they
are separate from God and so can't go to Heaven for God lives there. The good
works of a mortal sinner deserve no blessing from God. The works are sins
themselves for the sinner is only desecrating the good by doing it without
reconciling with God. To love a mortal sinner would be then to love something
that there is no moral good in. You cannot love sinners and hate their sins for
it is not sins we are against but bad people. Those who hate sin because it
insults the God of infinite love and so is very serious cannot love the sinner.
They say they can and do but they are lying. The doctrine of mortal sin prevents
you from looking at the good side of the person. The good side of the mortal
sinner is dangerous for it is not really good and the more good the mortal
sinner does the less likely he or she will be to see how much he or she needs to
correct their sin and make peace with God. The good side cannot be praised by
the true Christian. Instead the sinner has to be despised. God has to be loved
so much - indeed totally - so hating those who loathe him or don't take him
seriously or who don't appreciate him, ie mortal sinners, would be inevitable.
You cannot love God and love the mortal sinner.
Nobody really wants to hate for hate is its own punishment and is less selfish.
The evil person then will do good to mask his hate and to soften some of its
effects. He can end up in denial about how much he hates.
You may say that you mean, "I disapprove of the wrongdoing and of the sinner as
far as he or she is a sinner but there is so much I approve of so I am not
against the person." Suppose that is true. Then you are against the person a
bit. What you say is admitting that you hate and disapprove of the person who
has hardly any good qualities. If a totally evil person existed you are saying
you would hate them .
If I tell you I love you for you have some good points though you have sins too,
I am saying that my love for you is conditional. If you become bad to the core I
will not love you and I will hate you or not care what happens to you. I love
the good you do and not you as a person.
Does the attitude, "I love you dear sinner because I am a sinner too and there
is goodness in us that is greater than any of our sins", really come across as
love? It plainly admits, "Dear sinner if I decided you were completely sinful or
if you become completely sinful and worse than me I will not love you. I only
love you based on my assumption that you are no worse than me."
If you mean what you say you mean, then you are failing to love the sinner and
hate the sin.
The teaching that we must love the sinner and hate the sin because we are
sinners ourselves suggests that hating the sinner is good but only if you are
not a sinner! It involves wishing you were in a position to be able to hate the
sinner!
The idea that a person should be loved despite their sins means the love is
grudging and conditional. If I say, "I love you sinner but... and I hate your
sin" then you do not really love the sinner because there is a but there. Thus
it is only fair for people to be sceptical when you say that your hatred of
their sin isn't hatred of them.
If a battered wife or partner says of her man, "He is not all bad," she is
trying to protect herself from admitting how dangerous he is. She is trying to
make out that the goodness in him gives her reason to hold that he is worth
staying with. She protects herself from the trauma and uncertainty and sense of
failure that comes from walking away. She protects herself from admitting that
she is complicit in what he does for she does not protect herself from him. She
protects herself from feeling guilty as a result of that. The guilt will be
particularly strong if she admits to herself that she is failing to protect
their children. What if she ends up in hospital at her man's hands or dies? What
if the children suffer that too? She will be inclined enough to justify staying
with her man on the basis that he has some good points without religion
presenting her with a God who requires that she look at the good and forget the
bad. It will take her longer - perhaps all eternity - to wake up and smell the
expresso.
It is better for religion to collapse than for it to make it a divine law to
declare people not all bad and thereby bring tragedy to that woman and her
children.
If you identify a person as a sinner you are defining them by their
"wrongdoing." It is wrong for the same reason as calling somebody disabled
instead of calling them special needs. Admit that you are seeing them as a
sinner and blinding yourself to any other side of them.
To call a person a sinner is to browbeat and humiliate them and nothing more. It
is worse and more judgmental than calling them irrational or negative or stupid.
Why not concentrate on the fact that sinners attempt to do good (even if it is
the incorrect kind of good). The bank robber may rob for he wants his kids to
have a good education. Condemning sin is supposed to be about love but it cannot
be. Love the sin and hate the sin is unworkable for it is based on an incoherent
"morality". Praise the sinner for attempting to do good by the sin and see the
sin as an error. Praise the person and accept the person and thus empower them
to make amends and do better.
Seeing too much good in a bad person makes
you too slow to see the deal-breaker. Time passes by and more
harm is risked and done. Believing that God is more powerful
than this person's evil encourages that. Believing that God
has no fear of evil and bad people has its casualties. People
are in their graves over it.