The "hate the sin" doctrine is adored by
masochists and promoted by sadistic people
If you hate the sin, you will want your own strong disapproval of it and invite
the strong disapproval of others. There is no doctrine more embarrassing than
loving the sinner and hating the sin. Religion hates the evil intention in the
person. It hates the evil the person has become and hates the person. That is a
waste of energy because here is nothing anybody can do about that except the
person themselves.
Hate feeds on itself and creates a cycle for it twists how you feel and think.
Hate of sin (if possible) soon spills over into hate for the sinner. If hate
twists your mind you could think you love the person when you actually do not.
You are to love your rapist or the person who beat you up or the person who
murdered your parents as yourself. Nobody cares if the effort to love them and
especially that much is actually worse than you hating them. Many Christians
would admit they just give up for the stress of hating a person and being made
to feel bad about it and the stress of trying to forgive and the stress of
trying to love them as oneself is worse than the stress of merely hating.
Suppose they forgive. Forgiveness can be reversed. You can forgive on Tuesday
and on Wednesday its undone. So they have to try and renew it every day and
sometimes every minute of every day.
If you hate the sin another commits you are inflicting pain on yourself because
of somebody else’s sin and claiming that you love the person. If you hate your
own that is pure masochism. If you think sin runs the risk of everlasting
punishment in Hell - and the Bible God says it does - imagine how unspeakable
your Hell on earth will be!
Each of us needs to try and do what she or he wants and learn to not care what
others think. Some say we will always care a bit at least. They think the advice
not to care what others think pressures people to try and achieve the impossible
and abnormal. It is seen as an attempt to make us feel guilty if we fail. But if
we care a bit, we will only have a bit of guilt. It is better to face that than
to be a slave to the opinions of others.
If you are obligated to hate the sins you see and love the sinners that is an
awful lot of pressure for you. It hopes to put love and hate in conflict.
You see so much sin that it will be a great source of stress. You will soon lose
the energy to love. You will find your self-esteem in tatters for you will be
struggling uphill and continuously falling back. When that happens you will be
hating the sinner with the sin in no time! Hate the sin and love the sinner
almost translates as, "Hate your own guts and make your life a misery."
If Christians really can love the sinner but hate the sin then why do they get
so angry when they themselves are criticised? Why don’t they tell themselves
that the sin is what is being attacked and not them? Because they know that they
are being attacked when the sin is attacked. Trying to believe that the sinner
is not the sin in the sense that sin is the acting out of a bad character will
only add to the pain. Trying to believe that others really believe that will be
a battle.
Religion absurdly pontificates, "We must judge the sin not the sinner." Why? The
answer usually given is that it is selfless and self-sacrificing and loving to
show great kindness to those who hate you and who are conspiring against you or
those who don't deserve it. But in abusive relationships what happens is this.
When the man verbally abuses the woman and tells her that she is ugly, fat and
how dissatisfied he is with her or hits her he will say something along the
lines of, “I don’t want to hurt you but I do but you know I love you.” In other
words, “I am a good person who does bad things,” which is the same as, “Love me
even if you hate the bad things I do.” We know how bad it is for the woman to
believe him. Trying to love sinners and hate their sins gradually puts that
doormat punch-bag mentality in you. You deal with your fears by letting the bad
things you fear happen to you. You see the world as dangerous and so you don't
expect any different.
Love the sinner is really an endorsement of the Stockholm Syndrome. This is
where people think their abusers have not done wrong to them. They deal with the
horror of their suffering by seeing the evil deeds as good. They focus on the
few good deeds done by the abusers as proving the abusers are really good
people. They dwell on the good until the evil is seen to be nothing or almost
nothing. Love the sinner is an essential ingredient for the Stockholm Syndrome.
Nobody wants to be loved just for their good side and as if they had no bad side
for that is not really accepting them. There is no love without acceptance.
Jesus' teaching that we must love enemies and hate their sins means that we are
to pretend that when we hate people that it is their sins and not them that we
hate and when we find we hate them we are to feel guilty and seek repentance.
That teaching is not guidance, it is continual mental and spiritual torment.