“Hate the sin, love the sinner” is incomplete advice at best, and emotivistic nonsense at worst. Yes, of course one should hate sin and love sinners; to deny this is to deny obvious Biblical facts. But what is often implied when people use this phrase is that in loving sinners we cannot or should not hate any of them. Hatred is just as Biblical as love (Psalm 5:5-6, 11:5, Proverbs 3:32, 11:20, Leviticus 20:23, and so on), though it remains a highly unpopular feature of Christian theology. Separating sinners from their sins quickly devolves into viciously irrational thinking.
Sin has no existence apart from a sinner. Stupidity and evil acts can literally have no existence apart from beings who are stupid and evil. To even attempt to distinguish between them in a way that treats the former as not existing solely due to the latter is asinine, a fallacious attempt to distance people deserving of criticism from their own deeds, motivations, and ideas, when evil only exists because of evil beings and stupid ideas only have power because stupid people treat them as if they do. Treating evil people as if they are only innocent minds taken hostage by a force that deprives them of their rationality and free will is abominable.
The evangelical myth that love is more intrinsically powerful than hatred also needs to be confronted. Neither love nor hatred is, in itself, stronger than the other. Different people might find one or the other more subjectively empowering. Thus, holding up love as if it is the strongest motivating force is misleading at best. For myself, I find hatred to unquestionably be the more powerful, energizing motivator. There has never been a competition between the two concerning which is the mightier impulse within me, with only my love for select individuals exceeding my hatred for the majority of people I have met.
This does not mean that love and hatred, even for the same person, cannot coexist, for nothing about the presence of one logically excludes the other. Love and apathy, hatred and apathy, love and malice--these things displace each other. For apathy or malice to exist within a person’s mind, it must occupy a mental space to the exclusion of love. Hatred, being only an intense dislike, is, on its own, totally divorced from malice, and it is certainly not apathy.
It is explicitly clear that Yahweh is described as outright hating some people (again, see Psalm 5:5-6, 11:5). But Yahweh is not apathetic towards any person, wanting all to become saved (2 Peter 3:8-9). Since Yahweh’s nature is the standard for morality, human hatred is not sinful as long as it is not unjust or uncoupled with love. We are commanded to be like God (Ephesians 5:1), and this extends to more than just imitating God’s love for all fallen beings. One can resent a person for his or her shallowness, selfishness, or hypocrisy while still caring deeply for that person’s ultimate wellbeing.
And there’s nothing sinful about that. It only takes intelligence to come to this realization--not that most people have anything more than a minute amount of intelligence. No wonder most evangelicals don’t understand these points!
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