DISAGREEMENT OVER MORAL ISSUES MAKES LOVE SINNER
AND HATE SIN UNWORKABLE
"Love the sinner and hate the sin" are usually read as two different categories.
"Love the sinner" is one command and hate the sin is the other. Christians
usually say the two should be the same thing so that to love the sinner is to
hate the sin and to hate the sin is to love the sinner. In fact we feel
and sense there is a conflict and our feelings and brains tell us there is
indeed two commands and one of them is going to have to be put before the other.
Many Christians do not see "Love the sinner" and "Hate the sin" as compatible. They settle for saying that paradoxes are a reality and by some mystery God can truly love the sinner and hate that person at the same time and so can those who are given grace from God to be like God. They live with the contradiction but they cannot deny they hate sinners.
You will see what the believers really think of love sinner hate sin when you admonish them for a real or imagined sin. They will feel condemned as people and as totally bad.
Love the sinner and hate the sin if you translate it as
saying among other things, “love the racist but hate his racism” amounts to
arguing that he is not a racist but just does things that seem racist or he is
somehow not himself when he acts racist. That is not loving towards the
victims and only placeboes the bad person.
The Church says you cannot get far with love the sinner and hate the sin unless
you are attuned to God and receiving help from him. At least that this is an
admission that the huge majority of people in the Church who are not that
religious can be suspected of hating the sinner with the sin. And also they will
cherry-pick what sins upset them. We all know about popes who would not let gay
rights campaigners in the door while they cuddle up to blood-drinking autocrats.
Pius XII wined and dined psychopaths such as Pavelic and had no time at all for
Protestant religious leaders. People who cherry pick what sins they will hate
are really hiding their hatred for others under a virtuous guise. If you hate
sin you will hate all sin. There is something more personal going on if you hate
the sin of homosexuality while not worrying much about the corrupt dealings of
your banker husband.
Christians are not to stand idly by as people lead each other to sin. They are
to say and do what they can to encourage people to repent. We are ordered to
hate sin. If you like sin, or don't mind it, you become a sinner yourself. So
you are to detest sin and to war against it. Sin for Christians is telling God,
"You are all perfect and I wish I could destroy you." Atheists at least do not
intend that amount of vehement evil when they do wrong.
If the Catholic Church should hate sin, then other religions should hate sin
too. The trouble is that the religions don’t agree on what is sinful. For
Protestants for example, it is a sin to fail to use contraception when the wife
could die if she gets pregnant whereas contraception is a sin for the Catholic
faith no matter how good the motivation is behind it.
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 not as a sin. In reality there are no sinners. Praise the person
and accept the person and thus empower them to make amends and do better.
The moral disagreement in religion and between religions is going to cause a lot
of trouble. Some Christians believe that the greatest happiness or the greatest
good of the greatest number should be worked for. They might agree with stealing
organs in hospitals when the need is great enough. Others will oppose that
vehemently.
Some say that when HIV first appeared that the gay victims should have been
quarantined or executed to prevent an epidemic. Even people who would normally
disapprove would approve if it could be shown that this would have been the best
plan of action. But it may come down to evidence. The trouble with evidence is
that people will disagree on what counts as evidence and so there will be
different conclusions. Some will see the quarantining as hate. Others will see
it as a necessary evil. Some will say they see it as a necessary evil for that
helps them to mask the hatred.
If you are to hate sin, that will make you unhappy. Any kind of hate eats at you
and makes you angry and twisted. Christians personify sin as somebody they want
to hurt. The principle of love the sinner and hate the sin wrecks the fact that
we should try to make others and ourselves as happy as possible. It accuses
those who see through it of being so evil in that they deny that loving the
sinner requires hating the sin. So the biggest and worst sinner in the long run
and in the heart is the person who admits that the principle is sickly-sweet
hypocritical bullshit. That kind of "sinner" is certainly not loved while their
sin is hated. As Christians try to love murderers they do not try to love those
who see through their rubbish principle.
It is possible to imagine a person loving you and also hating you. That is what
love the sinner and hate the sin at best will result in. Hate the sin is
incitement to hatred against the person and breaks the law. And it is even more
dangerous when taught by a religion that exaggerates how wrong doing wrong is
and exaggerates the number of actions that are wrong.
It is possible to treat people deliberately badly out of love. Such love is more
harmful and dangerous than outright hate. It confuses the victim so much that he
might not know how to address the problem. If we praise such love we can hardly
condemn hate!
Civil law cannot be expected to agree with the notion of loving the evildoer and
hating the evil they do. When the rule is no good in such a matter of importance
then it is no good at all.
The Christian claims that love is an absolute. It says that it is better to be
murdered by a lunatic than to live and to fail to love somebody. That is why it
says that sin is the greatest evil of all and even worse than death. So if
somebody attacks you to kill you, you should be examining yourself all along to
make sure you love this person attacking you and that you are not letting
yourself or sin. If you start doing that you can be sure they will succeed! The
hatred we feel for the attacker and the anger is necessary for us to get the
strength and concentration to fight them off. It is an evil faith that teaches
such things to children. It only makes the child feel guilty about exposing the
priest who is abusing her or his body to give one example.
Catholicism is using its boast that it can love the sinner and hate the sin as
an excuse for looking good while encouraging hate towards persons. It is Church
teaching - ask it! - that our actions define us, and we can be held accountable
for them. We are accountable for our actions - our actions cannot be accountable
for themselves. Thus the sinner is the sin. The Church agrees with the Batman
line, “It’s not who I am underneath, but what I do that defines me.” Thus the
Church is lying that it loves sinners and separates sin from sinners to hate the
sin.
Conclusion
Love the sinner and hate the sin only tears you apart and makes your
relationships with "sinners" passive aggressive at best. It is not the great
means of creating cohesion in society that it is said to be. It only creates
moral confusion in a world that already suffers that confusion too much with
often tragic consequences.