What Do You Hate?

What do you hate?
Or perhaps less pointedly, what do you love?
Because they are different sides of the same coin.
So, seriously, what do you hate?
Because everybody in the world loves something. And everybody in the world hates something. Every single person
As a Christian, you may have a guttural reaction to this assessment. You may be screaming to yourself How dare someone make such a jarring and wholly indefensible accusation? Who is this to suggest that I would ever hate anything? In fact, by now you may have stopped reading, insisting that my assumptions are too foul. If you are not a Christian, you may be equally as appalled, feeling in your heart that even though you do not agree with my faith you are loathe to hate anything, considering yourself able to tolerate and coexist with a multitude of different ideologies, none of which you would stoop so low as to hate. To suggest otherwise simply spits in the face of your self-identified amicability.
To be consistent with Truth, it is extremely important to recognize that there is nothing in creation that is worthy of our hate. There is no man, woman or child, no beast of the field nor creature of the sea, no mountain or valley so vile as to necessitate a poisonous hatred from within our souls. There is nothing we can see with our eyes, touch with our hands, hear with our ears, smell with our noses or taste with our mouths that should push us that far.
But hate does exist. We all have experienced it, both internally and externally. It wasn't always meant to be this way. There was a time in human history when hate was not a consideration. But I will hold off on that for a bit. I submit that today in truth we all love something, while at the same time we equally hate something else, even if we don't admit it. In some cases, we can be loud and proud with our loves and hates, shouting them from the proverbial highest rooftops in the way we live and interact with the world around us. When it comes to that which we despise, we may be bold and bombastic in insisting that there are certain things in this world that we simply cannot stand, and more to the point we carve out special places in our hearts with which we can loathe, despise and detest.
Or in some cases, we carry our hatreds most secretly. To the outside world we may seem at peace and in unity with all that is around us. We feel as though we are in balance and nothing would cause us to crouch and dig into that most basic instinct. We insist that we hate nothing, and who is to argue? But deep inside, in places of our soul that we rarely identify or acknowledge, we keep the tiniest of rooms. We hold those thoughts in the dark places we neither admit nor show, but that we clutch like a fragile egg. We plant them and cultivate them, giving them just enough nourishment to grow into full blown hatred. But we will never let them out, at least not in our public lives. There they will stay, hidden from view, invisible to the world around us.
Make no mistake, there are many things that are socially acceptable to hate. War, poverty, and disease are a few of the earthly perils that most would say it is agreeable, if not desirable, with which to direct our sneers.
But then there are those things that are not worthy of hate, yet hate is manifested towards them every day. Surface differences between us and other people, be it skin color, gender or ability. Habitual differences, such as that which exists between the smoker and non-smoker, the vegetarian and the meat eater. And faith differences, a hatred that has manifested itself throughout the centuries.
And to the Christian, he or she is commanded to love. Love one another, love the Lord your God, and love His creation. But be assured, whether Christian or not, there is something of which we should direct that most heinous of feelings. Something very specific, and something most certainly not intended in the beginning.
Which brings us to the crux of the love/hate argument. For the litany of things that could be loathed in the world, it all really comes down to a choice of two entities. You see, we are all going to love and hate something. That much is absolute, and in this world that will never change. The truth is there are only two facets worthy of such devoted feelings.
What are they? It's quite simple, really, if you take even a cursory look around. The first is the system of the world. It is that which everything on this present plane, hovered over and prowled on by the very Prince that dominates the Air, is pushed and pulled. It is that which we should not want, but that which towards we are all too often drawn. You may know it by its common name. It is sin.
Remember the notion that there was a time in human history when hatred was not a consideration. That time existed, though it was comparatively ever so short. It held reign on this world up until the moment that one foolish individual turned his back on Truth and decided that the incorruptible should become corruptible. It was that man's choice - that Adam's choice - that brought us the stinging and putrid reality of sin.
Sin is that which has corrupted, has destroyed, has blemished all that this world once was and could have been. It is the decaying mark that has brought us all those horrors as previously mentioned in the form of war, disease and poverty. It populates this place with its very nature, and infiltrates each and every human from the moment of conception. It is a pox that will not leave this planet through any power that we as men and women inherently possess.
You see it every day. You see it's grasp stretch from sunrise to sunset, to the edge of the horizon and even to the places on the map that have yet to be filled in. You see it in the smallest of inequities. You see it in the horrors of war and destruction. You see it in deaf jealousy and wordless greed. You see it in the death of the living.
It is sin that is to be hated, and hated furiously. Love is commanded in all things, except when it comes to sin, as written in Romans 12:9: We are called to practice love in all things except when it comes to sin. Sin we are to despise and hate, and in doing so we are to turn to what is good and cling to it.
This is not a command against any single man or creation upon this planet. Instead, with all those that we come across, we are to show love in a way that is unmistakable and right. We need to know, and show, that the order of things in this current age, as watched over by the ever present eye of sin, is one that cannot earn our love. Though we know that one day it shall be abolished, that day has not yet come. Until that time, we are to know this enemy. We are to identify this enemy. We are to hate this enemy.
But we need to be ever vigilant not to lose our hatred of sin. For if we lose that, there will be an inevitable need to fill the void. There is a need in all man to love something, and in turn hate something else. The question then is, if we lose our passion against sin, what will we direct that passion towards?
The answer simply enough is Jesus. For if sin is that which is worthy of our hate, then there must be something of equal or greater measure to thrust that hatred upon should we embrace sin. For the antithesis of sin is Jesus, and it is He who is then to be hated.
Does this hurt certain sensibilities of today? Does one really have to hate Jesus if they do not hate sin? Jesus answered this question in Matthew 6:24: No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Perhaps you are different. Perhaps you feel you possess the ability to have no negative feelings about sin while still loving God. Or be apathetic towards God while dabbling in a playfully sinful nature. This is a fool's playground. It is a paradoxical impossibility. For as God has shown, He hates sin. And his Word repeatedly demands a complete rejection of the sinful order of this current world. In choosing not to completely reject that sin, one is inherently rejecting the commands of God. It can't be avoided.
The concept of hating Jesus may seem all too distasteful. You may not agree with all that Jesus said. You may not even agree that with Him when He said He was God. But hate is such a strong word, and you wouldn't go so far as to say your relationship with Jesus has reached the hate point. Unfortunately, if this is even a consideration, then your current stance towards sin is love. Which leaves only one option for your current stance towards Jesus.
So should you choose to direct you hatred away from sin and towards Jesus, perilous though it may be, you certainly wouldn't be the first. If you choose to fully reject sin and the order of this world, then you should prepare to be hated. For Jesus enumerated both in John 15: 18-19, referring to the sin order with the word "world": If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
Joshua said it best when addressing Israel at Shechem for a renewal of the covenant in Joshua 24:15: But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.
So the choice is simple. Choose today whom you will serve. Whom you will love. Whom you will hate.