Do not I hate them, O Lord, that hate thee? And am not I grieved with those that rise up against thee? I hate them with perfect hatred: Psalm 139: 21,22
How would you rate yourself as a hater? Please check one:
1) Never hate at all
2) Hate sometimes, a little bit
3) Can really hate at times
4) World class hater (these have become very rare)
the very word hate has been banned. People hate it. I am not so good, so I can hate. I am not in the class of David, but I am old fashioned enough to be able to do it.
don't hear a lot about Jesus cleansing the temple, but I have a dear friend who sat up when she first heard about it. She was just a little girl. "Now here is a Jesus I can understand!" she thought. She loves and serves him every day.
Believe hatred is being bred out of believers. They have been gelded. I was in a church class not long ago and read "As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated." (Romans 9:13).
People recoiled as if I had thrown a snake in their midst. "What kind of Bible is that?" a man asked. I was reading from my King James. I have checked this passage in many translations and looked up the root word for "hate". All agree. The people of the class did not.
I had returned to my old denomination to see if they had changed. Apparently not. C. S. Lewis, whom I really like, said, in effect, God who is love can obviously not hate anyone.
But Robert Haldane, a hundred years previously, anticipated this argument. He wrote the finest book on Romans that I have ever seen. To Robert, it is not what you think, but what God has said that mattered.
Show me how you hate and I will know how much you love.
Such a timely post !
ReplyDeleteI hate injustice, unfairness, unthinking or deliberate injury to animals, child abuse, emotional abuse, child abduction and molestation, murder, elder abuse, and some of the things ministers do when they have lost their way. I hate totalitarian governments and those who would take our freedoms. I try not to hate embodied souls. We are here trying to do our best in a world which is tenuous ay best. Of course, sitting in the flesh suit myself, I have limited success in limiting my hating of others inhabiting the flesh suits.