It takes zero effort to find, or even bring to mind, the opinions of the huddled masses on "love" and "hate" in Christianity. The consistent drumbeat of modern culture taps out two rhythms on a regular basis: "God is Love", and "the attitudes of the Christian right involve hatred" (whether that be hatred of homosexuals, minorities, non-Christians...whoever. In fact, the previous post regarding the great Duck scandal of '13, addressing the likelihood that Christians will hear "bigot" and "hater", received some response that consisted of...accusations of being a bigot and hater. In the interest of broadening the understanding of folks regarding Scripture, a few words on the subject of love and hate.
When folks on the left, religious or otherwise (and indeed, increasing numbers of various Christian churches) say "God is Love" and "God loves the world", which are both scriptural truths, they attach certain fundamental presuppositions to the definition of love. Firstly, that God's love is deficient compared to human love, e.g., that God's justice would be violated were he to even possess the capacity to love some parts of his creation more, or differently, than others. When scripture says that God loves the Church like we are to love our wives, that is a sign that God's love is not a bowl of jello pudding with no valleys or heights, but that God loves the church in a special way. The English language suffers from a deficit of words for "love" and "world", as highlighted in CS Lewis' text on the four loves of Scripture, and the gospel of John's 13 different uses of the word "cosmos". (When we are to love not the world or the things of it, no one thinks that cosmos means all people identically, and yet that context is stripped from John three in most pulpits).
Linked to this idea of God's love, which reminds one of a toddler with peanut butter (it gets on everything, somehow) is the idea that God's love cannot be transformative, and in fact that it lacks the evaluative significance of even human affection. How can the love of God transform if God loves the reprobate the same as the Church? How can God's love be evaluative if God, unlike us, is obligated to love equally? In fact, the unfastidious love of this (hypothetical) God cannot be attached to human morality at all, much less affect it. And it is this love which demarcates the shadow of the left's idea of "hate".
The dictionary defines "hatred" as an intense dislike for something or someone. It is true, regrettably for the theological left, that according to that venerable repository of English vernacular, God hates a lot of stuff. Stuff we call sin. Haughty eyes and lying tongues (Psalm 6:16), idolatrous worship, (Deut. 12:31), lovers of violence (Psalm 11:5), dishonest reverence (Is. 1:14) the works of the Nicolaitians (Rev. 2:6), etc. Compounded with King David, a man after God's own heart, who reckoned as enemies in the Psalms, all who hate the Lord, it is clear that God's hatred for violation of his law is an eternal and just component of his character. The Proverbs tell us that the very fear and reverence of the Lord is the hatred of evil. (8:13). All of this is lost in the context of a weak and shallow God who pours out warm fuzzies on mankind without discrimination, who indeed has no moral law which is enforceable, who cannot speak with enough clarity to even reveal what he dislikes or prefers.
If any on the church left have stuck with me to this point, their claim will be that people like me don't distinguish between the sinner and sin. Leaving aside the fact that sometimes God and David don't either (Ps. 139:21), they point to the supremacy of Christ's commands to love thy neighbor and pray for our enemies. While the same cavillers have little interest in a holistic, non-contradictory reading of Scripture, this circle can be squared by rejecting the church left's definition of love, which itself cannot distinguish between sin and sinner. To love people is to want the best for them, to pray for them is to desire what God desires for his people: to come to a saving knowledge of the Truth (1 Timothy 2:4). To "love them" is not to pour out the same undiscriminating acceptance of all behavior that people allege of God. If it is difficult for Christians to react in a godly way to, for example, homosexuals, it is made more so by the obscene spectacle of "pride parades" in which man is so totally immersed, his self image so totally bound to his sin, that there is nothing left of his identity but hatred of God's law. (Imagine a parade of people demanding that their love of murder be recognized as vital to their self esteem). To love a homosexual is to hate their homosexuality, just as to love a heroin user is to hate their heroin use. That this is a scandal and a stumbling block cannot be helped, I am commanded to proclaim it by a higher authority than GLAAD.
If there are those who criticize my prior terminology of spiritual combat, of a God who hates evil, it is Scripture they beef with, not me. Do I "hate" homosexuals? No. I am grieved for the lostness of those sunk in that lifestyle while remembering that I am no better without the alien righteousness of Christ. But I do not repent of the black-and-white nature of Theonomy, nor of the "warfare" terminology. All who fail to find Christ injure themselves and those who hate him love death (Proverbs 8:36). Am I a "hater"? Yes, I hate the death I was purchased out of too much to accept it passively for others, and I pray that God increases the hatred of that death in me daily.
~JS
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