Hate What Is Evil

The irony that my first day of classes is on my first day of meditation about hating evil is impressive. Today, I wondered what a week of hating evil would look like, trying to wrap my fingers around how one learns what genuine love is by hating.

I thought it ironic that the course of events for today unfolded as it did.

A brief conversation about Satanism.
A course all about sin and salvation.
A discussion with an atheist and a lapsed Christian on the oppression of the church.

And I thought, this is what it means to hate what is evil.

It is right, even good, to hate things that are detestable. Loving people means hating genocide. Loving God means hating heresy.

But something about it seems so wrong. Counter-cultural. Mean-spirited.

We all know that we are called to love God with all our hearts, minds and spirits. We all know that the first command is to love God and the second is like it: love one another. We know that God is love and we have been told since kindergarten if not sooner that Jesus loves us.

I don't remember the last time I was reminded God hates.

Last semester, in a Bible study through Exodus, I continually required the wonderful freshmen in my group to think about God contrary to their expectations. We focused on God's wrath, his bloodthirstiness, his anger towards Moses' cowardice. We talked about the God who hates. The God who kills Pharaoh's army.

It is easy to read those stories and believe that the God of the Old Testament is a different god altogether. It is easy to read those accounts and determine that it must all be moralistic myths written by an aggressive people worshipping a deity of their own creation. But as easy as it may be, its not truth.

In order for God to love, he had to hate. In order for God to demonstrate covenant faithfulness with his people, he had to destroy those who sought to harm the Israelites. In order for God to be worthy of worship, he needed to be something other than warm and fuzzy. No one worships the Care Bears — and for good reason. A God without wrath is a God unable to follow through on his promises.

I have a theory: in order to make God less offensive and more desirable to people, we have polished away God's wrath and replaced it with Victorian pastoral images of a shepherd with cuddly sheep and a Jesus who looks like a day care worker with children climbing all over him. We've ignored a God of depth and replaced him with an icon that makes us feel good. Because of this, Christianity has failed to be culturally relevant because God has become just "the big man upstairs" an absent, unassuming, wish-granting deity.

In our efforts to make God more, we've made him so much less.

I find myself struggling to want to hate. I want to love everything. I want to affirm people and give them gold stars for effort. I don't want to speak out against evil. I want to be congenial. And I shouldn't be surprised by my desires. It is so much easier to be liked if all you do is make people feel good. It is easy to be a Christian if all you are asked for is to receive love.

We worship a suffering savior. Therefore, our faith is inherently offensive. May we see truth as our guide and seek good with our full beings. May we remember that full love requires hatred.


Amos 5:14-15: "Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said. Hate evil and love good, and establish justice in the gate; it may be that the Lord, the God of hosts, will be gracious to the remnant of Joseph."