BE ANGRY AT SIN NOT SINNER
Religion says to love the sinner hate the sin. Love the sinner nearly all
the time does no good to the sinner. It is usually done at a distance. It
amounts to hating sin for nothing. It is pure passive aggressive!
Love the sinner and hate the sin tends to be a minimum requirement. It is
as warm and loving as giving a starving person a stale slice of bread when your
satchel is full of cream cakes even ones you don't want.
Hate and anger are not exactly the same thing but you
cannot have one without the other.
Anger is the feeling that something should not happen and fuels you to work for
change. Anger is a feeling that is about repelling evil. It demands submission
from the person who is engaging in wrongdoing against you and satisfaction -
that is for the situation to be fixed satisfactorily. Anger is directed at some
threat or perceived threat. It communicates a warning to the offender in your
body language and perhaps speech. It encourages fear of the threat and thus hate
for hate is rooted in fear.
Christians approve of Jesus throwing the money-changers and other con artists
out of the Temple and consider this as an example of just anger - an anger that
is about making evil people awaken to the reality of what they are doing and
about protecting people from them. They say just anger stops evil from
flourishing.
Anger is a response to a situation that I think or feel should not be. It is
tormenting myself over something that I cannot control. Even if I hit my car and
damage it, that is done. Getting angry about it is not going to help. Anger is
an attack on myself. It kids me that it will do something about it. Anger is
irrational and is self-torment and makes you a pain to others too or a potential
pain.
Hate is the feeling that a person should lose his or her wellbeing and fuels you
to make that happen as far as you can. It is also directed at a threat or
perceived threat.
Feelings against sin like all feelings are not 100% rational and cannot be.
Feelings are not reason. To think and to feel are two different things. Thus in
so far as the feeling is not rational there is a risk or a will to risk becoming
a threat to the sinner.
Religion allows anger against sin as long as the anger is not incurring sin and
is about stopping or reducing sin as much as possible. Your anger towards the
sin of another is not about wanting to stop the sin. You say you cannot make
another person's choice for them. It is about wanting them to sense your anger
and getting afraid. You want to hurt them.
People do not like others to be angry at them for it threatens their plans and
them. Anger can go out of control and lead to hate or violence. People do not
like others to be angry at them for the anger implies that they are accused of
being in the wrong. They think, "Who does X think he is being mad at me? He is
so high and mighty."
People do not like others being angry with them because it threatens to make
them feel bad about themselves. A person can hate themselves because they
perceive that others are angry with them. They feel they are the cause of
other's suffering anger and stress.
Anger is protective of values and the self-esteem of the angry person and rouses
them to deal with threats to values or the self-esteem or both.
Some say you must be angry at the sin not the sinner. But a sin is never a
threat - it is the sinner who is the problem. Being angry at the sin not the
sinner would mean your anger is in bigger danger than ever of going out of
control. It would mean we do not have to worry about hurting the sin by being
too angry.
Each person is the cause of her or his own reactions to the behaviour of others.
If you make yourself angry you are a threat to the safety of others or you are
trying to be. The anger will be increased if you tell yourself that it is not a
person you are mad at but a sin. It will worsen again as you try to keep up the
deception and stop yourself seeing that you are angry at the person. It is
better to hate and be angry at a person and realise it and admit it to yourself
than not to.
You will necessarily see the person who is angry with you as accusing you of
being a threat.
The teaching of hate the sin and love the sinner makes no sense for hate is
necessarily about hating a person. You cannot hurt the sin but only the person
committing the sin. You cannot oppose the wellbeing of the sin for the sin is
not a thing, it is something that makes a person a sinful kind of person.
If you must love the sinner and hate the sin you must feel anger towards the sin
but not the sinner.
The problem with the element of anger is that it is lunacy to imagine you can be
angry at a sin not a sinner. Another person's sin never hurts you, it is the
person that does that.
We tend to be grateful to things when they benefit us. We feel a sense of
gratitude towards the car that gets us to hospital. We kick and curse the car
and swear at it when it breaks down. We treat events and things as if they
consciously bless us and curse us. If you really hate a sin, you are
personifying it and you are as good as hating a person. That hate will be just
as poisonous as hating a person and make you bitter and dangerous.
Religion teaches that it is better to be unselfish and harmful than to be
selfish and harmful.
The Church wants to blind people to the truth about how you cannot be angry at a
sin without being angry at the sinner.
If you deny your anger, it will still be there but simmering away and perhaps
pretending to be something else.
Then it is never dealt with and will spread poison through your heart.
If you hide your anger under passivity, you are really violently forcing
yourself to deny and repress your anger. You are making yourself a victim. That
will only lead to more fear.
If you diplomatically ask for your rights to be respected instead of repressing
the anger you will avoid this fear. The fear will only worsen the anger and give
you new things to be angry about. Soon the steam out of your kettle will make
you mad.
Telling people it is a sin to like sin or to not care about it means it is a sin
to do anything apart from hating sin or being angry at it.
People cannot do it and then they are left with the burden of guilt on top of
their problems.
If hate is bad for its dangerous and irrational then love the sinner and hate
the sin serves only to make it even more dangerous and irrational. All hate and
anger risks going out of control and invites loss of control. It is partial loss
of control. It is even more reckless when you tell yourself that the hate and
rage is not about the sinner but the sin. Then you take away the boundary
between administering justice or going beyond it too far. There is no hope of
finding that boundary if you ignore the needs of persons. Hating a sin or being
angry at it implies that you know to what degree an "immoral" action committed
by a free agent may be hated or be the cause of your anger. It exposes the
hypocrisy and deceit of saying ,"I believe in judging the sin and not the
sinner." You are judging the sinner when you cannot know their degree of guilt
or responsibility. Religion says only God knows exactly how bad a person meant
to be. You are acting like God.
The Bible is clear we are to hate whatever God hates. Even if sin does not take
place we are to hate the thought of it. If there were never any sinners sin
would still have to be hated in principle. Yet the Bible says we must not let
the sun go down on our anger. If we are angry at sin not the sinner then this
advice makes no sense. It makes more sense if the anger is directed at the
sinner. Being angry at the sin not the sinner is not in the Bible.
It is odd to argue that if your country attacks an evil
country to cleanse it that you hate the terrible things it does not the people
who do the things.
People who worry about the wrong they have done, feel consoled at the doctrine
of love the sinner and hate the sin for they think it means they will be
protected from the consequences of their "sins". When they realise that the
devotees of the principle do not really think sins should not mean consequences
for you they end up angry at the hypocrites.
People feel hurt because they perceive attacks against them by other people as
personal attacks. In fact, there is no such thing as a personal attack. People
judge not you but their perception of you. This principle is a foundational one.
It is the secret to building magical castles bursting with health and happiness
and joy in your heart beyond even the most of your imagination. There is no sin.
Sinners do not exist. Those who say they love sinners and are mad at their sins
are liars.
Nobody who wants justice is going to feel satisfied if
justice is solely about what the person did and not the person. To feel
that the action must be condemned not the person will do nothing for you if the
person has cruelly tormented your loved ones to death. The dentist who
treats you as a tooth not a person will be despised. Love the sinner and
hate the sin attacks the victims in the name of religious faith. The
hypocrisy only makes things worse.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
The Power of 'Negative Thinking', Tony Humphreys, Newleaf, Dublin, 1996
