Attempting to Love Sinner and Hate Sin is an Act of Violence Against Yourself for it is Impossible
We must love the sinner and hate the sin. Jesus told us to love everybody but
he said we must judge sin fairly and hate it with all our hearts. To love God
with all our hearts means we must hate sin - his reverse - with all our hearts.
The Bible says, Hebrews 1:9, "You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness;
therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with
the oil of joy." "Hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good" (Romans 12:9).
Psalm 97:10 says, "Hate evil, you who love the LORD, Who preserves the souls of
His godly ones; He delivers them from the hand of the wicked." Amos 5:15 says,
"Hate the evil, and love the good, and establish judgment in the gate."
To hate means to will evil for another person so to hate a sin is to will evil
to a sin as if it were a person. You cannot really hate something except on the
personal level.
It is not sins we hate but what they say about the person doing them. We don't
hate a bad person's actions but the bad character of the person and which is the
person. To separate sin from sinner is to pretend that the sinner is not a
sinner. If we do that we must pretend that the person doing good is not a person
doing good. We must do wrong against good people by pretending they are not what
their actions say they are to please this wonderful Christian faith.
Some see love the sinner and hate the sin as simply a refusal to see the sinner
as a failure. The sinner is a criminal against God but not a complete one.
The crime matters and must be dealt with but there is more to the criminal than
the crime. This reminds you of the advice that you can fail and you will
fail but that does not matter as long as you don’t fail to keep trying.
That gives the religious away. They must hate the sinners who are not
trying.
It seems to many that loving sinners and hating sins only happens if the sinner
is seen as a person doing an evil thing out of character. But people disagree on
whether that should be considered a once off and treated that way or as
incredibly evil for the person could have done better and the worst person is
one of good character who suddenly mocks it by doing such a thing and perverts
it. No matter how many lives a doctor saves, if he takes one life, his character
will not even be considered and should not be. He will be stopped with violence
if anybody can stop him killing. So being good and suddenly doing evil may show
you were an actor up until now or it may show you are so malicious that you
refused to use your outstanding good qualities in a good way but perverted them.
The out of character thing does not work and is a reason for hating sinners with
their sins.
Some say loving sinners hating sins is only correct if it is a rather minor sin
such as stealing from the biscuit tin. In that case the doctrine is not much
use. And what about those who say that it is not about what you did but what you
are? A thief is a thief. You are still stealing whether it is a biscuit or a
thousand pounds.
Others say that there are some things that you regard as part of your nature and
sense of identity that are condemned as sins. Take your sexual identity. If your
identity as a good partner to your mistress is being called a sin you will see
that as being an attack on you. You are one identity and yet several so to
attack one is to attack all. To attack your eye is to attack you though you are
not an eye. You will feel violated and indeed should. You have being treated
with some kind of violence. Not all violence needs to be hitting or anything
like that. The worst violence is not that kind.
To see your identity not being called a sin but a source of sin is as bad.
The Church may say being homosexual is not a sin but causes you to sin.
That has no practical or significant difference from saying the identity is a
sin.
Religion tries to make out you have an identity as a member of it or as a child
of its God. This is a ploy to make you take it personally when your
"religion" is criticised so that the critic is intimidated. It results in
you being forced to apply love the sinner and hate the sin to the critic which
is doomed to fail anyway.
People hate their labels being insulted though when a label is given to them it is merely objectifying and degrading them unless it truly is descriptive of them as a personality or persons. A label may just be a word stuck on you with no justification but that is all it takes for you to feel insulted personally when the religion applying it to you is condemned. Religion usually has so few truly faithful followers that generally speaking it is really and virtually just a label. If religion is not a real hospital for human faults that has supernatural power to help then it is nothing special and must take responsibility as a religion for what any evil members do in the name of faith or even otherwise. How you feel is a result of how the religious system has manipulated you. It is cruel and leads to violence. Shallow religion wages as much war as one that takes itself seriously. A sinner lets the label down and you as label bearer probably will that that personally. You will hate the sinner.
Love the sinner and hate the sin inflicts psychological violence on you and
those who look up to you all in the name of hypocrisy.