Eric's Sunday Sermon; Hate

Hate crimes, haters, hateful, I hate lima beans, I hate doing my taxes, I hate gays, I hate Christians and I hate politicians. Just what does hate really mean? Are we all guilty of hating? Did you realize that there is no commandment in the Bible directly telling us not to hate? Can we hate a group based on a few of thier that we know? Why do children even say “I hate”? What would we think of the proposition that hate is good? In battle is there any benefit to hating your adversary? Where did hating your ex-spouse come from? Does “hate the action not the actor” make sense?

What would you say to the notion that there are as many kinds of hate as there are kinds of love?

Is hatred the opposite of love?

Certainly I hope you are scratching your head as I am. Here is a cool thought though; In general the word hate has negative connotations in our world society. I think that is a good thing. Do you think it is possible to hate your enemies and still love and pray for them? I think it is accepted by the medical/psychiatric community that hate has dilatory effects on our health. Is anger part of hate?

Merrim-Webster gives us common usage;

Full Definition of hate

1

a : intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury

b : extreme dislike or antipathy : loathing <had a great hate of hard work>

I like that “deriving from fear” part. Perhaps I would say it “deriving from fear and ignorance”.

Well of course I cannot answer all the question posed above. So maybe I can figure out what I hate about hate. Isn’t that kind of like getting anxious over anxiety? That snowball effect is a real trap.

There is one thing I know and that is that hatred in our hearts separates us from our God. It drives a wedge between us and our connectivity with divinity. That alone should keep us from hating.

It would appear that we often use the term hate to indicate a simple dislike for something. There was a time when I had a pretty bad back. Bending over caused pain. So I developed a dislike for pulling harmful weeds. Keep in mind that dislike is not the harboring of something. It is the absence of liking something and that is perfectly normal. “I don’t like to….”. Well through a rigorous exercise regimen my back no longer hurts when I bend over. But the dislike/hate toward pulling weeds remains when in fact when I weed I get great satisfaction from the results and I can rationally see the benefits of being outside with plants and getting exercise. Go figure that one out. But we can see that using the word hate in this context simply means that I do not have a liking of it. Not a bad thing at all. And really isn’t that the way we commonly use the term hate.

Here is a good one. I prefer a routine. When something interferes with my routine I hate it. I found myself just the other day nearly turning down a great opportunity to do something fun because I disliked the idea of disrupting my routine. That is crazy! I think that we can be so blinded by hate that we miss out on a lot of good things. So hatred like resentment usually hurts us more than what we hate. I know of a man that hates Asians. So he misses out on Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Thai and Filipino cuisine. Well I hardly see how he is hurting the Asians.

Here is a fun one I just cannot pass up. Ancient Greek for hate is miseo. Within that definition is the concept “merely to love less”. So in the Bible at Luke 14:26 it is translated into the notion that we are to hate family and friends and focus our love on God. When in fact it means that we are to love God more than anything in this world. Totally different than our notion of hate. Very easy to be misled here and very cool to know the truth. I think I fail here because I do not love my son less than God, just differently than God or my wife.

So let us be real clear here. We use the word hate more often than not to describe that we have no “like” for something – dislike.

What are we to make of this concept of politically correct speech? Somewhere along the road to now we put negative connotations on words. It seems as though there is a war on words. I do not like the organization called “Black Lives Matter”. I just think that their hard to pin down leadership is steering the members into hatred. Do I think black lives matter? Of course I do and so do you. But if you criticize or say “I hate Black Lives Matter”, that somehow gets twisted into I hate blacks. And now you are a hater. That is just bizarre extrapolation. Just because you hate a concept and organization does not mean you hate the people involved with it. Hate the action not the actor.

Is there room in our hearts for hate? I was hammering the other day and hit my thumb. I just hate it when that happens because inevitably you will hit it again in short order. Just one of those strange things that happen repeatedly. Even if my heart is filled with love, I have room for that kind of hate.

Here is something to contemplate. Dictionary definitions by nature are supposed to report those definitions as reflected in common usage and common meaning. The most common use of the word hate is just the normal day to day when we use it to mean that we have no like for something. So why do we immediately jump to the most negative meaning of the word when considering hate? It really makes no sense at all.

Now let us look at really bad hate. (Maybe that should be with a capital H) A friend asked me just the other day. What came first a conversion to being a mentally disturbed person, or conversion into a radical religious belief that terrorism is OK? Make no mistake all-consuming hatred of a people is a mental disease. Taking action on the delusional hatred makes one very sick indeed. Some people actually believe that the actions of the people being hated causes the sickness. Unlike the movies, a person cannot cause another person to go insane. But what about brainwashing and hatred passed down from generation to generation? And that takes us back to the original question. Is one insane first or is the hatred that is taught the cause of insanity? I have concluded that it could be either.

So some hate is merely dislike. Some hate is caused by dumb resentments and/or ignorance. And some hate is just plain sad as it has consumed a person. I love to be loved. I hate to be hated. As we touched on earlier, there is one remedy for that horrible kind of hatred. If our hearts are completely filled with love there is no room in there for hate. So I ask you to do something for me. Love others so much that their hearts fill with joy and love. In so doing you can help them remain free of the disease of hate.