The only way to hate hate is to be positive about it by learning to both love and control the passion that comes with it. Hate generally is to have a great aversion to, with a strong desire that evil should befall the person toward whom the feeling is directed or to dislike intensely or to detest; as, to hate one's enemies or to hate hypocrisy. This definition raises two very important classifications of the same feeling.
1- Hate of one’s enemies; disliking those who you don’t agree with, and
2- Hate of a specific character in a person but not the individual him/herself.
Which of the two types of hate do you hate? The first one involves passionately disliking the person not the character, but the second entails objection of a specific quality in an individual. As a practicing Christian, the first one would make me hate the sinner but not the sin and this negates the very purpose of Christianity, whilst our calling demands that we practice the second angle of hate; hate the sin not the sinner. This is because the Bible teaches us to love our enemies as it also admonishes that, whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer. 1 John 3:15
.
|