LOVE SINNER AND HATE SIN  REQUIRES ABSOLUTE PROOF THAT THE PERSON REALLY HAS SINNED ie THAT SIN IS REAL AND GOD IS REAL

 
The Church says we must judge the sin not the sinner. We must punish the sin not the sinner. We must hate the sin and love the sinner. It does not like to say very much about this ridiculous and embarrassing doctrine.
 
Religion says that free will is necessary to make love possible. Unless we freely become love, we cannot really love but merely go through the motions. Free will is about what we become and is not, strictly speaking, about what we do. What we do speaks of what we are. Evil deeds do not make you evil. You do them because you already are evil. The doctrine then that we are to love sinners and hate sins contradicts the respect that is due to free will if we have it. You have to hate the sin with the sinner for the sinner is the sin. If free will is a gift, free will is only a gift for the loving and a curse for the unloving and those who encounter them for they must hate them. Extreme proof would be needed that it is fair to say that people might sin or can sin or do sin.
 
You would be pure evil if you hurt a person when it is the sin you have the problem with and not them. The doctrine takes all credibility away from principles about caring for the innocent and treating the guilty as they deserve. As we will see, belief in God makes wrong out to be worse than what it should be made out to be. It adds fuel to the fire.
 
Atheists may see a person has having done wrong but not as having sinned. Doing wrong means it should not have been done but it is not against God's law. It is not a breach of divine legislation.
 
The atheist should not hate the wrong-doer for she or he should keep a sane perspective on the wrong and not be against it more than she or he needs to be.
 
Religion sees the wrong as bad for it is wrong and ALSO bad for it is defiance of God. So wrong is more wrong if there is a God who moralises and legislates. So if you hit your friend you have to worry about disobeying God in addition to what you did to your friend. Indeed God would have to be the prime or only concern.
 
Religion says that God is infinite unimaginable holiness and goodness and sin is so serious for it defies and insults that goodness. It follows then that the atheist is dangerous for he fails to see how hideous and ugly evil really is. The atheist in fact in some way facilitates it and makes more acceptable than what it should be. The atheist cannot choose God and be united with God in Heaven because he doesn't even understand God or good adequately. The person who does not take sin with huge seriousness is failing to see the enormity of God's opposition to sin and is an evil person who airbrushes sin a lot or trivialises it.
 
Religion goes too far in the condemnations of sin. It should stop at saying wrong is wrong. No self-respecting person would tolerate such harshness or be in a religion that endorses it. It is slanderous, harsh, frightening and discouraging. It only leads to people being attracted to "sin" if only for the sake of defiance and it destroys the credibility of the wise who know better about right and wrong.

Not only does religion stop at the harshness but it renders it off the scale bad by saying that unrepentant sinners will be shut away from God and from love for all eternity in the despairing torment of Hell. It is bizarre how some people say, "Religion is good and would never kill or hurt" when it teaches savage doctrines like that. They probably don't even realise that they think Hell is rubbish.  Jesus dying for sin and to make reparation for it makes sin very serious indeed and makes it intolerable.
 
The doctrine of sin being a crime is evil. It is evil to accuse people of crimes without proof. It is evil to accuse people of being sinners while being unable to prove there is a God to sin against. Religion cannot prove God's existence sufficiently. Religion is calumny.
 
Christians say you can go to Hell at death if you are estranged from God and its your own fault and there will never be any way out. You need 100% proof that a person is capable of sinning to the degree where he or she will keep away from God for all eternity. The Christian doctrine of Hell incites to hatred. You do not love a person you accuse of being capable of such an evil unless you have absolute proof.
 
Remember, the following is hypothetical: If there was any hope of loving the sinner and hating the sin, you would love the sinner because of the sin. So it would follow that the more certain you are that an act in question is sinful then the more you can love the sinner. This would be the case even if it is not. We should be glad then if people are wrongly convinced that we are unlovable and evil. We would prefer people to love us because they think we have sinned. We will feel that if they love us in spite of our sins that they have to force themselves to love us. Real love just happens.
 
Love the sinner and hate the sin claims to be about recognising evil for what it is and about enabling the sinner to feel a suitable burden of guilt and sense of sin. If sin implies a rejection of God and love forever, this burden is very severe. In that light, one should take the kindest and most reasonable view of a person or their sinful actions. You could assume that when they hurt others it is themselves not the other people they are trying to get at. If they hurt others, you can assume the others actually want to be hurt and prolong the pain of their own free will. If they say they hate it is part of the game. So love the sinner and hate the sin is useless when it is remembered that it is impossible to really prove that one intends to hurt others or that others are not as much to blame if they do hurt them. Love the sinner and hate the sin is really about making an excuse to hate others while still dousing in rose perfume.
 
CS Lewis said that the devil's biggest trick is to have people think he does not exist. That is nonsense. Lewis was thinking how the devil hides his existence so that he can get people to damn themselves to Hell forever far more easily. Lewis should have said, "The devil's biggest trick is to make us think that sin is not so bad that it can mean a choice to go to Hell forever." It is a pity he failed to see that Christianity must be guilty of doing Satan's work for its handling of sin as we have seen is totally incoherent and one rule undermines the other.
 
Love the sinner because of the sin is bizarre and stupid. The more you doubt or are unsure that the act is sinful, the more you intend an injustice and intend hatred for the person. It is directed at the person not the perceived sin! Nobody would believe you if you accused somebody of a sin on very little evidence and maintained that you loved that person. So the person who has strong evidence that x is committing a crime against divine law loves or can love x more than the person who has less evidence that x is guilty of that. The love would only be complete if there was absolute proof that x was sinful. Christianity cannot provide such proof. It tells you that you can judge a person as having done wrong but you cannot judge them as a sinner for you don't know to what degree they intended to sin.
 
The believer needs the "love sinner but not his sin which you must hate" rule more than an unbeliever might. The believer needs to promote a God who loves sinners and hates sins. This implies that since the rule is bad, anything that increases any excuse to have the rule or the "need" to have the rule is just disgusting. It goes with belief in a God so God is a bad belief.
 
If you have absolute proof that x is a bad person and to be avoided at all costs then fine. Anything else would mean that the problem is you. You categorise people like x as untouchables in order to protect yourself from some harm you think they may do to you. You reject them to protect yourself. You malign and hurt them not because you are evil but because you want to make yourself safe from them or as safe as possible.
 
If you think you are bad, you fear rejection from them so you may reject them first. This is protective behaviour. You may even beat them up and do terrible things to them to drive them away from you or to diminish the threat you think they pose to you. You see them as deserving only bad things and punishment. But you do this not to hurt them but to save yourself from the imagined danger.
 
If our bad acts are about protecting ourselves and not hurting others then we should reject the concept of sin. It is unjust and slanderous. And though we do bad things, we are though to have bad black hearts and to be intending malice when we are not. Thus loving the sinner and hating the sin would be pure hypocrisy. Devotees of it in reality are masking their hate for the sinner. They are like people who are sweet to you but who wish evil on you in their hearts.