What is Hate?

What is Hate?

We’ve all seen someone, usually adult male, whose hand has the word ‘HATE’ tattooed across their knuckles. I truly do not hate a single person. I cannot do so. Hate is such a wasted, un-Christian, and unintelligent emotion. I do hate sin, even though I too am a sinner saved by Grace, and I hate bigotry. Most of all, I hate hatred. But I never get emotional about it unless its being directed at someone – anyone – in a personal manner.

I cannot understand a hatred that causes grown men to gang together and chant hateful words at people who cannot defend themselves. I cannot understand hatred that kills people just because they believe something different from me. Yet there in the middle of an old Rogers and Hammerstein musical, South Pacific, is that crazy song, “You got to be carefully taught” in which comes the line, “To hate all the people your relatives hate.” That’s how hate perpetuates itself – generation to generation.

The world hates.

Jesus teaches love.

I have a favourite ‘sermon’ which I sometimes use when invited to speak and given a free choice of topic. It is based around a saying that a friend of mine uses all the time. “As a pastor, there are three golden rules. You must first Love the people, then you must Love the people again, then finally you must Love the people some more.”

That’s what Jesus did throughout His ministry. It’s what He taught throughout His ministry. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” John 13:34

We should love, and love, and love some more whatever the world throws at us and however much hate we are subjected to. If John Lennon was almost right about only one thing in his life it was that, “All you need is love.”

“Hatred stirs up strife, But love covers all sins.” Proverbs 10:12

“Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NKJV