Can Hatred Be Holy?

 A group of college students had been touring some squalid inner city slums of a large, metropolitan city. One of the young women saw a pitiful, filthy little girl playing in the dirt. She asked a guide, "Why doesn’t her mother clean her up?" The guide replied, "Miss, that little girl’s mother probably loves her, but she has lived here so long she no longer hates dirt. You hate dirt, but you don’t love that little girl enough to get down there and clean her up. Until hate for dirt and love for that child are in the same person, that little girl is likely to remain as she is." One point that can be drawn from that thought-provoking little story is that love for good is a pretty empty and ineffective thing unless accompanied by an equally strong hatred for what is evil.

Can hatred really be a good thing? Can it ever be a holy thing? To conjoin the words holy and hatred as a Christian virtue seems almost shocking to our modern sensitivities. We are relentlessly (and correctly) told that "God is love" (1 John 4:8b). But it is false to insist love is God. Many recoil at the idea God could ever hate anything or that He would call Christians to hate some things. "Hate the sin, love the sinner" was a phrase often used in the past to emphasize the need to oppose wrong and immoral behavior and to lovingly encourage people to make a change. But that was before it became politically and even religiously and theologically incorrect in many circles to call sin sin anymore. As a result sin has been sanctified and baptized in a linguistic baptistry filled with words like "openness," "tolerance," "inclusiveness," "civil-liberties," and "personal choice." John Steinbeck, in his book Of Mice and Men, pointed to the decline in moral values when he had one of his characters comment, "There’s nothing wrong anymore." Now sin has all but disappeared from our cultural vocabulary and world-view.

Back to the question – can hatred ever be a good thing? Can hatred ever be holy? Consider the apostle Paul’s directive to Christians living in the very pro-sin and anti-holiness culture of ancient Rome in Romans 12:9-10 – "Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good." Those words are are a part of an extended section in the book of ROMANS (beginning in chapter 12) that explain how Christian living works itself out in everyday life. And they are a part of Paul’s inspired writing. I am amazed by that single but simple sentence of holy Scripture. It calls Christians at one and the same time to love (the next verse commends "brotherly love") but also to "abhor what is evil" even as we "cling to what is good." To abhor is to regard with disgust and hatred, to loathe and detest, to recoil from and shudder at. God hates sin. He doesn’t just have a dislike or distaste for it – He detests it. The cross of Christ declares that at one and the same time God loved us but hated our sin. It is said Jesus "loved righteousness and hated lawlessness" (Hebrews 1:9 quoting Psalm 45:6-7). In Revelation 2:6 Jesus commends Christians at Ephesus "that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate." So, too, Christians are told to, "Test all things; hold fast what is good. Abstain from every form of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:21:22). Remember this point – hatred is holy when we hate what God hates. Let us ask God for insight and strength and courage to discern and abhor what is evil even as we cling to what is good. Think about it.

      By: Dan Gulley, Smithville, TN