Love sinner and hate sin in the light of the
Christian doctrine that hate that cannot be helped isn't sinful
Christianity says we are born sinners and everything we do is tainted with evil
and rebellion against God. Catholics teach that even the saints sin and a
saint is a person who has unusually with the help of God reduced this rebellion
to a heroic degree. By default this faith is saying that if you don't hate
who you hate you may as well for you would only be committing some other evil in
its place anyway.
You are urged to fall literally in love with God but all such love leads to hate for those who you see as not being good to the beloved.
Jesus supposedly gave us an example of loving sinners and hating sin. Well we see the hate for he ranted insanely against Jewish leaders and attacked their Temple. Despite saying that evil creatures only have hate for each other and thus chaos, he told the Jews that Satan would not remove a demon from anybody. So a Mafia boss would not shoot his accomplice? This example alone is bad for those who affirm love the sinner and hate the sin. It is not going to work.
We live in a world where many feel that when they did grave evil against those who they perceived as harmful enemies they were provoked, or mistaken or carried away by the heat of the moment. They feel they could not help the hatred they felt. Some feel that maybe they could help it but are not sure. Muslims may say that certain sins such as blasphemy and homosexuality are sooooo offensive that it is to be expected for believers in God to overreact. Catholics who see abortion as murder may lose control and shoot abortionists. In war, you are expected to go berserk in some ways in order to eradicate the enemy. War demands that. Rage and offence could be used as an excuse to get away with the evil you have done. Human nature knows it has to convince itself that it is innocent when it is not. That way their defending themselves comes across as more sincere and consistent. Human nature more than not looks for a way to get off the hook.
No faith says that hatred of the enemy even when it leads to murder is a grave sin or a sin at all when through human weakness you lose control in anger.
They say the end result is bad but as a person you are not bad. You are not sinning.
What use is the principle that such behaviour is harmful and bad then in that case? There is no point in caring about principles if people cannot act on them.
Going out of control necessarily means that you will not understand the
consequences properly. So you cannot be fully to blame. If you let yourself lose
control, in reality you think you know what will happen but you cannot. It is a
mistake. If you lose control you deserve compassion but since you are
sacrificing yourself for the wrong good and it is not your fault you would still
be entitled to a reward from God. God has to reward all actions that would
be well-meaning if they could be or well-meaning bad things done without
preparation and under pressure. If you go out of control because of evil
impulses, God in his generosity would have to reward you. After all, it is not
your fault you lost control and he has to assume you would have done good
instead if you could have.
Victim-blaming is rife in society. We must not believe the religious pretence that victims are always cherished and loved by religion. The sinner is considered to be in spiritual danger and in danger of Hell so the religion is going to worry more about loving the sinner than caring about the victim. Spiritual danger is considered more harmful than anything that is done to a person. The religionist who claims to love the sinner loves nobody when she has no real concern for the sinner's victim. To fail to protect the victims or care is to really fail to protect anyone.
Liberals and the Left go all wishy-washy about terrorism especially religious terrorism. But their fine words will not help for they refuse to admit that the terrorists feel provoked by things done by the target countries to their own people and by things that they see as grave sins such as homosexuality and semi-clothed women. They refuse to admit that religion sees some sins that are not really that bad or which are in fact good as grave evils that wipe out the light of God in your heart and draw you to become the enemy of God and man for all eternity in Hell.
It should be noted that if it is true that we need to
hate sin and moral failure in ourselves and others, that this is an admission
that vengeful feelings are necessary. They are excused on the basis that the
alternative is supposedly worse. To hate sin means you approach it like a person
and hate her or him. Loving the sinner and hating sin is treating the sinner as
a person who is not sin, the other person.
To see sin as a person when it is not and in order to hate it on the personal
level is outrageous hypocrisy. It is claiming that there is nothing defiling or
bad about hating a person as long as it is not a real one! But if hate corrupts
you, it corrupts you whether you hate a real person or not. The attitude is
still vengeful and malign.
That nobody will see you as sincere if you say, "X is an amazing person. He just
made bad choices when he murdered those babies" shows that the Church's love for
sinners is faked. Saying that is passive aggressive hatred for the babies. It is
a boast for accusing somebody of being evil and saying you can still love them
is quite a heroic achievement.
The Christians say you can only sin in so far as you freely choose to sin. You
can do serious wrong without intending it to be as serious as it is.
Love the sinner and hate the sin, in principle says, that it is possible to be a
good person worthy only of blessings and go out of control with hate. It may as
well approve hate in such circumstances. The principle never claimed to be easy.
If you hate anyone or anything the hate risks going out of control. It is saying
yes to the risk. That would be a hateful act in itself.
Love the sinner and hate the sin indicates that we do not live in an ideal
world. So if the love part is good and the hate part is less good but necessary
then there will be problems. Believers will say we have to take the problems
with the principle for it is still the best principle though it has its risks
and flaws.
Hate is the urge to hurt another person just because you want to see them hurt.
Most who discourage hate argue that it is to be avoided for it gets too easily
out of control and your perception gets distorted more and more all the time as
it becomes a habit. Your view of others becomes polluted and bitter. Most people
see hate as a Pandora's Box and this is their main reason to oppose hate. Such a
view suggests that hate is not bad in itself as long as it can be kept within
boundaries. This makes you suspicious of those Christians who claim to believe
in hating the sin and loving the sinner - they are trying to smugly hide their
hate and are examples of passive aggressive hate. And there are people who seem
- who seem! a seem does not amount to an are! - capable of restraining hate.
Incredibly, religion claims to be good while it makes the desire to hurt sin or
hurt people far more fierce.
An atheist does not believe that hurting another person offends God or offends
God's law. The atheist should worry about what the hurting of another says about
her or him and what it does to the other person and maybe that person's friends
and family. The atheist thinks in terms of hurting others but not in terms of
sin - sin is breaking the moral law of God. If atheists hurt another person,
they mean to hurt that person. But if believers in God hurt another person, it
is not just about what they did to that person. It is about God too and God
comes first. So belief makes the intention of the believer to hurt far stronger
than the intention of the unbeliever. Faith in God and faith in religion lead to
making evil intentions more worthy of condemnation and invent sins which do not
exist. It is evil to accuse a person of sinning when we should accuse them of
having done wrong - there is a difference that matters hugely. You need proof
before you can accuse somebody of a crime against God and that means proving God
and that the "sin" be it sex before marriage or whatever really is a sin. Belief
in sin and God and religion amplify your wrongful intentions. They make you more
evil inside if not outside than you would be if you were an atheist.
Suppose you are to love the sinner and hate the sin. Suppose you get a choice.
You are forced to hate one of two people but you get to choose which one. Do you
hate the murderer? Do you hate the person who sins in saying that loving the
sinner and hating the sin is nonsense? It follows that the latter person is
worse for he attacks a principle that matters more even than the principle that
murder is wrong. It is more basic. The murderer hated the person he killed but
the denier of love sinner and hate sin will hate anybody who he sees as a
sinner. Thus you should hate the person who says love the sinner and hating the
sin is nonsense. Even if love the sinner and hate the sin is the best principle,
it does have its dark side. It still says to others, "If I have to hate you then
I will." In the midst of love we are in hate.
