Relationship between indifference and love sinner and hate sin
A sin is supposed to oppose the goodness of God and as God is goodness it amounts to telling him he should go and die. And to imply or infer God should die is to infer you should die if it is true you cannot exist without God. Religion says sin is pointless and its silly to say there could ever be a way of understanding it.
A sin is supposed to be bad for us and those who are affected by what we do. It is bad in principle and hurts because it is bad in principle. The principle then comes first.
So we have to care if somebody sins. The argument is that if you witness a sin it becomes your business for you are involved. You cannot say you are not involved for seeing it involves you.
Our feelings are linked to our character. A kindly person will get upset at seeing others being unkind to people. So we care as in feeling and in how we see the action.
Does caring mean we must hate the sin? If sin is terrible and trying to understand it is futile and harmful as we have seen then you won't be able to help hating it and indeed you should.
Some say that God does not hate sin but is merely its converse. Our sin excludes God and he excludes it. Oil and water is a good metaphor.
Hate is distorted love. You can't hate a person or thing you don't give a toss about. Hate is not the opposite of love. Hate is wanting to pay a person back for somehow having failed to give you the love you want from them for you value them. You fear being hurt by the one you value so you twist the value you have put on them into hate.
If love and hate are two sides of the one coin then to
open yourself up to love is risking opening yourself up to hate. What if we have
to hate somebody in order to be able to love somebody else? Many people
claim to be like that. Jesus said no man can have two masters for one will
be loved and the other hated. He said hated though there were words for “loved
less.” Most people are not paragons of virtue nor do they want to be. Love is
easier if you find somebody to hate. We all do it. To command love is to
command hate and the god and religion that do it must take some responsibility
for the hate.
The true opposite of love is indifference: not caring. Pope John Paul II said
that the opposite of love is using the person as a means. The person is used
instead of valued. Indifference always involves looking at the person as a
non-person or a thing. It is a user outlook.
Even if hate is not the opposite of love it is clear that
hatred is definitely an attempt not to love. That is what it is whether it is
successful or not. An attempt to hate would be morally evil and hating
somebody when you cannot help it would not be. So trying to hate would be
a bigger issue than actual hate.
Those who hate the sins of others in fact only do so because they admire the
sins and wish they could commit them too! Thus they are being plainly spiteful
and jealous. They are lying when they say that they love the sinners in the
proper sense. That is another reason why religion should not be permitted to
hide behind the smokescreen: "Oh we urge people to detest those sins but this is
not incitement to hatred."
Why are we not told, "Love the sinner and be indifferent to the sin"? Hate is a
strong and vindictive command. Because hate and love go together it follows that
the command is hatred of the sinner. It's a polite way of saying to sinners that
you hate their guts.
Summary - if people are to love sinners, then it follows that they can hate them
for hate is distorted love. Telling them to hate the sins means you are to have
a distorted love for the sins! If the sins are bad for the sinners, then on that
level you hate the sinners for you love what is bad for them. Telling people to
love and to hate is creating the conditions for the distortion needed to hate
sinners. And because there is distortion, it is easy to claim to love the sinner
and to hate the sin.
THE WEB
www.shilohcommunitychurch.org/love_sinr.htm
TRUE OR FALSE? GOD LOVES THE SINNER BUT HATES THE SIN, FALSE, Errol Hale
www.ffrf.org/fttoday/back/hatred.html
With Perfect Hatred by Dan Barker
http://www.godhatesfags.com/
A Baptist anti-gay site
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GOD IS NOT GREAT, THE CASE AGAINST RELIGION, Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic
Books, London, 2007
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East Sussex, 1995
HOW DOES GOD LOVE ME? Radio Bible Class, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1986
IN DEFENCE OF THE FAITH, Dave Hunt, Harvest House, Eugene, Oregon, 1996
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London, 1986
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Veritas, Dublin, 1987
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Murfreesboro, Tennessee, undated
THE BRIEF OF ST ANTHONY OF PADUA (Vol 44, No 4)
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Oakley, Universe, Burns & Oates, London, 1963
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