RELIGION COMMANDS HATE FOR SIN BUT HATING SIN IS
A BURDEN
Everybody with an enemy says they hate them or the things they do. Religion talks about loving sinners and hating their sins.
Hating the sin of your enemy means that you may as well
hate your enemy. The stress and suffering your hatred will inflict on you will
be very great. You are unlikely to be able to hate everybody. You would be
better off hating some people than hating sin. Hating five people is better than
hating all the sin you see for then you will soon be consumed for you will see
little else but sin!
Hate does not really matter. It is an emotion. Controlling
it matters. Believers say it is not a sin to hate if you really can’t do
anything about it. Believers claim that it is better to be destroyed than to
sin. That is worse than hate. That means that if the circumstances suited, they
would destroy you. Choosing to hurt somebody without feeling any hatred makes
you worse not better. It means you did it without the influence of a feeling.
Feelings happen to you. You don’t control them. They control you. When you feel
enraged and you calm down it is because the feeling of calmness came in and it
comes by itself regardless of whether you want it or not.
To do foul things makes you a foul person. To say you
hate the sin is simply another way of saying you hate the sinner.
Believers sometimes say they do not judge sinners but
love them. Not judging makes no difference - you still judge the act and you
still dictate consequences for the person.
If you insult me, I let myself be hurt by it. You never
insulted me or hurt me. I did that to myself. If I condemn what you did, then I
condemn you. I am certainly trying to hate you if I don’t actually hate you.
People make a distinction between disliking somebody or
hating them. Dislike is hate for like hate it wants to hurt for no good reason.
It may be hate to a lesser intensity than what we call hate but it is still
hate. It means you are refusing to give yourself to another.
Suppose somebody is being told some very unwelcome truths
about their behaviour. The critic may say, "I am not saying this to be critical
but to help you." This is another con like love sinner and hate sin. The motive
does not change the fact that it is criticism.
"I love my son but hate what he has become" is admitting
to hating him though believers say it is not.
The pope says he forgives the woman who attacked him.
Does that mean he hated her and wished her evil before he did that? It must!
Hate sin means to hate somebody’s choice. Is it hating
the abuse of freedom or is it hating the freedom to sin? Certainly if you could
force a person to be good and not sin you would force.
Suppose you really can love the sinner and hate the sin.
You can stone somebody to death believing that it is not personal or about
hurting the person but eradicating the sin and euthanizing them.
Thomas beats Johnnie to a pulp for the hell of it. If
Johnny is a consistent believer in Christianity, he will have to say, “Thomas
never hurt me. Thomas is a wonderful perfect person. It was his sin that hurt
me.“ To say you love the sinner and hate the sin is only another way of saying
that.
The Church calls you a sinner meaning you are not
considered separate from your sin. So love the sinner and hate the sin is
contradictory and impossible.
The adage to love sinner and hate sin is incitement to
violence in the sense that if you hate the sin you would torment the sinner to
make him change if that approach would work.
Secularists are sometimes fooled by the boast of religion that it hates the sin
and loves the person responsible for the sin. Why hate sin or evil? There is no
need to! The hate is like torturing yourself over evil. It is like punishing
yourself for something you haven’t done! The unnecessary hatred of sin is really
a thinly disguised hatred for the sinner. Incitement to hatred legislators need
to be aware of this. They must not let religionists use tough love as an excuse
for their rantings against sin and efforts to stop it. An enemy could say they
call you names and treat you badly out of love and call it tough love.
To say you love sinners for God loves them implies that they are hateful but if it were not for God you would let yourself detest them to the uttermost.
Nobody does wrong except for the good they think they see
in it. You mean to do good when you do wrong. Therefore for anybody to
hate your sin is to hate you. To tell anybody, “I hate the way you behave”, is
really saying, “There is more to you than what you do and it is you I hate. I
hate you as a badly behaving person.”
THE RULE MAKES BELIEVERS PRIDEFUL
Believers in love the sinner and hate the sin are taking
a position of self-proclaimed moral superiority. They are willing to hurt others
and look down on them to make themselves feel superior. They point to Jesus who
did not tell the adulteress, “Go and if you believe adultery is right though I
believe it is wrong then you can commit it." But, “Go and sin no more.” He
was indeed looking down on her for he didn't tell the mob not to try and get
women killed any more!
JUDGING SIN
Judging means perceiving a person as deserving the
suffering of punishment and condemnation.
Do you love the sinner and hate the sin when you detest
and oppose the fact that your son is taking drugs. No. It is not the same thing.
You hate the danger that could befall your son. That is love. But to bring moral
judgment into it means you hate him as well.
If you judge him a sinner then to hate and oppose the sin
is to hate him as well as the sin.
Judging is unavoidable. If sex outside marriage is wrong,
then even people with good intentions who engage in it are bad. They might not
mean to be but they are.
Christians judge everybody by saying that everybody is a
sinner.
Does love the sinner hate the sin really just mean
“Condemn the sin but forgive the sinner?” It would have to in order to make any
sense. But if you condemn the sin you have to condemn the sinner. Otherwise if
you are pretending the sinner and the sin have nothing to do with one another.
And if that is the case, how can you forgive a sinner if they have had nothing
to do with their sin? Forgiving must mean you condemn and therefore hate the
sinner but are refusing to indulge that hate. So the hate is still there.
Imputing guilt or an evil disposition or evil activity to
someone is not necessarily judging them. For example, if a band of thieves judge
that x may make a good thief for them they would not concern him for becoming
one. Indeed they will regard him as a godsend.
Real judging is linked to the concepts of punishing and
deserving.
If you hate the sins of others, you will blame them for
how bad this hate makes you feel. Religion causes trouble. Outright hatred would
be better than this sneakiness.
Judging is a form of hate. Punishing and judging go
together. Judging is willing pain on someone for having done what you perceive
to be wrong. To judge is to try and hate. And it is hate.
Love the sinner and hate the sin if possible with family
members and friends is surely not possible with strangers.
The advice would work if you hate the sin BECAUSE you
love the sinner. But empathy and moral outrage tend to work at cross purposes.
And not all sins have significant bad consequences. You can't always hate the
sin because you love the sinner.
People who say that we must not judge are hypocrites. If
a young man beats up an old man who he says molested him years before people
will say the young man behaved badly. In other words, they are saying the old
man did not deserve it. This is siding with the pervert against the victim. They
say the victim should be punished. They say the victim deserves to be hurt in
return for beating up the old man while the old man should get away. This is
outrageous hypocrisy. They say it is not for us to judge people - meaning the
old man. Then they judge the person who attacked him. The goodness of Christians
is really a form of camouflaged evil.
People judge morality on their feelings. This means they
hate the sinner when they say they hate the sin. It means we should assume they
are idolaters. If I condemn something someone does because I FEEL abhorrence for
their action then that is not the same as believing they have done wrong in the
sight of God. I am declaring my feelings to be God.
It is really the judging of the person that is the problem. Judging and hating go together. You even judge the good person you hate, "That person is bad in my eyes and I want to see that person suffer". When you see that love the sinner hate the sin is really saying judge the sin not the sinner you see how silly it is. "I judge your bad character but I don't judge you." It is pure contradiction and it is insulting.