"Love the sinner" and "Hate the sin" - Meaning?

 
Love the sinner and hate the sin does not refer just to those who are in the process of committing some sinful act. It is about the state you are in and what your character has become.  You commit a sin and put yourself in the state of sin. So being called a sinner describes your state and what kind of person you are as a result of the act. A rebel is a rebel even when they are not rebelling but merely having their dinner.  Love the sinner and hate the sin takes work.

 

The question is if there is any point in the work?  There is not if it is impossible.

 

The weeping and grinding of teeth in Hell that Jesus talks about is said to be the damned regretting not the sin but how much they suffer for it. They do not hate the sin as such. You might wonder if the liberal “Christians” who say hating sin is about compassion for the sinner for sin hurts the sinner are in fact preparing people for a hotspot in Hell! Both the liberals and the damned just care about side effects of sin not sin!

 

Love the sinner and hate the sin.  Look at the words.  The words used hide what is meant.  "Love Joseph but do not love what he has become" is the translation or the paraphrase.  It proves you in fact do not love the sinner and hate the sin.  See how much more personal all the language becomes.  That is disguised effectively by love the sinner and hate the sin.

 

Archbishop Fulton Sheen writes:

 

Christian love bears evil, but it does not tolerate it.
It does penance for the sins of others, but it is not broadminded about sin.
The cry for tolerance never induces it to quench its hatred of the evil philosophies that have entered into contest with the Truth.
It forgives the sinner, and it hates the sin; it is unmerciful to the error in his mind.
The sinner it will always take back into the bosom of the Mystical Body;
but his lie will never be taken into the treasury of His Wisdom.
Real love involves real hatred:
whoever has lost the power of moral indignation and the urge to drive the buyers and sellers from the temples
has also lost a living, fervent love of Truth.
Charity, then, is not a mild philosophy of "live and let live";
it is not a species of sloppy sentiment.
Charity is the infusion of the Spirit of God,
which makes us love the beautiful and hate the morally ugly.
__________________

 

Love the sinner and hate the sin could be paraphrased as, "No person is completely bad. Even in the worst person, there is some good so respect the person for the sake of that good." This ignores several things. Many people do not see the two as the same but as two ways to look at how to approach the sinner. Anyway that does not matter. To really focus on the good you have to tell yourself the bad is not there that you are to hate it and not the person as if the person has nothing to do with it. A bad person could see your respect as saying you don't really care about her evil. She might see you as a hypocrite. If you do care about what the evil she does says about her, she will not feel very accepted - people need us to accept them warts and all. What if she has depression - is your attitude going to help it? Also, people hate bad people BECAUSE there is good in them meaning they don't have to do the bad things they do. The you think they have the potential for good the more you will detest them. Also if a person really is totally bad it would mean you agree with hating them. You are a hypocrite because you condemn hate but not in principle.
 
Hatred is made up of fear, anger and the spiteful desire to injure or destroy. Hate is a passionate and intense aversion and hostility. Love and hate are antonyms. Thus we see through those who say they hate the sins of those who they claim to love. Hate implies judging and intolerance.
 
If you do not fear something you cannot hate it. You cannot fear sin but those who commit the sin. Hating the sin and loving the sinner is a mask for hating sinners.
 
Anger is the dislike and emotional pain you feel at the thought of something being done wrong that makes you want to react and stop the perceived evil. Anger is said to be not necessarily spiteful. But it can be.
 
The spiteful desire to injure or destroy means that you don't care about right and wrong - you want to destroy or hurt whatever it is that is injuring you.
 
Jesus Christ and the Christian Church command that we must hate sin. When we see others sinning we are supposed to fear, be angry and set out and stop the sin - we are supposed to hate it.
 
But they command us to love sinners. How do you love the sinner and hate the sin? The solution they give is the unhelpful, Love the sinner and hate the sin. They repeat the problem back to you as if it is a solution.
 
Love sinners and hating sins is unhelpful for it is contradictory. It is pretending that the sin and the sinner can be separated - they cannot. To hurt one is to hurt the other. To dislike one is to dislike the other. When you say you hate the act of stealing but love those who are stealers you are defining the person by what you hate so you hate the person. You are trying to go into denial about that hatred.
 
Supports of love the sinner and hate the sin say we cannot hate or condemn the character of anybody who sins for we are all sinners. But that only adds fuel to the fire. If we are all sinners that is all the more reason to hate sinners. If some people are not sinners you might say that you should be kind to the sinner and loving so that she might become a good person. But there is no chance of that if you say that all are sinners.
 
A sin is an act that ideally should draw down suffering and punishment. To love the sinner because of the sin in the sense that you see the sin as harmful to them is impossible. That is really hating the harm and not the sin. To love the sinner in spite of the sin implies you are trying to force yourself to love and you are on the edge of hating the person with the sin.  Love the sinner and hate the sin translates as, "I want you to be happy and only if you give up the sin. I will not make you happy in the sin. If I am good to you it is to help you give the sin up." If it was stated like that people would see through it. But it suits religion to lack transparency.
 
To say you love the sinner in spite of the sin would be impossible if you separate the sin from the sinner. That you say you love the sinner in spite of the sin is to admit that the problem is the sinner not the sin. It is to admit that to love the person is to love someone who is at least partly unlovable or evil.
 
Love the sinner and hate the sin is five commands in one. Here they are.
 
1 Do not fear the sinner but fear the sin.
2 Do not be angry with the sinner but the sin.
3 Do not wish to spitefully destroy or injure the sinner but to spitefully destroy and injure the sin.
4 Do not verbally abuse the sinner but the sin.
5 Do not mistrust the sinner but the sin.
 
All you have to do is see that the commandment is really these five commandments and they are so absurd that you know then that those who claim to be doing a good turn by commanding the love of sinners and the hatred of sins are lying hypocrites. The main ingredient of hatred, anger and spite is fear. That is the rock they are built on. So number one is the main one and it teaches the biggest absurdity of all: Fear the sin but not the sinner! Preaching such a ridiculous thing is on the face of it is as insane as claiming to be God himself!
 
A sin is a free act of evil done in disobedience to God. If we have free will and do evil, we give ourselves an evil nature. Evil becomes us and we become evil. In so far as we have an evil nature, we are to be identified with our sin and hated.
 
Love the sinner and hate the sin means, “Learn from us what love is. Give this to the sinner. But hate and wish evil on and refuse to tolerate their sin.” It is not exactly humble is it? The sinner who is loved is really just being used to nourish the self-righteousness of believers.
 
Love the sinner and hate the sin makes no sense for sin by definition is intolerable meaning that the person who sins is intolerable for the same reason that a criminal cannot be tolerated. A sinner means intolerable person.
 
Christians are to love God for being what he is and not what they think he should be. God by definition is the being who knows best and does best. Loving sinners is supposed to be about loving them for what they are and not for what you think they should be. In other words you ignore the sin and even tell yourself that there is no sin in them at all! This is contradicted then by your calling them sinners and calling them opponents of holiness and the law of God and the perfect love of God. So you love them for the perfect people they are. If you partly hate the sinner and claim to mostly love them then you do not love them at all. You fail to love the persons for what they are and not for what you think they should be. Love the sinner and hate the sin only impresses those who do not really understand love. Those who preach the principle are propagating saccharinised evil.
 
I have seen love the sinner and hate the sin linked to the notion that we should forgive people who truly repent of their sins for the right reasons and who have went to God for his mercy and pardon. God loves the sinner who repents and asks for mercy. The implication is that he hates the sinner who is happy to keep sinning. That would imply that loving the sinner means loving the repentant sinner while hating the sin means hating the sinner as long as he or she is unrepentant. If this is the correct understanding, then the doctrine is actually inciting to hatred. What restrains the hatred a bit is the awareness that one must not put the sinner off repenting but encourage her or him. But it is still hatred.
 
If the sinner is the person who prefers evil to being with you and God for all eternity, you can certainly hate that person and claim, "I cannot help it so its not a sin."
 
To call somebody a sinner is to measure them up against a moral standard. Moral people value rules above people for they think people cannot function without the rules anyway. So the rules come first. Love the sinner and hate the sin is about your standards with which you judge the sinner. It is not about love at all. Its love is hypocrisy and a pretence. It is an “I love you but-”. It cares about the moral standard not the people.

 

The teaching, "Love sinners and hate sins but be sure that you hate your own sins the most" is at best a distraction.  If you see what you find to be morally deficit in others you will focus on it.  It is that simple.  And if you are to love others altruistically and if you really think sins harms the sinner, you will focus more on hating the sins of others..
 
Religion usually does not like to explain love sinners and hate sins. No wonder! 

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