The Cornerstone

Do we hate the things God hates?

Carl R. Trueman, Issue Number 19, March 2008

Not many people today regard hate as a virtue. Even the great hatemongers of the last century, the Hitlers and the Stalins who so poisoned the history of modern Europe, presumably regarded themselves not as peddlers of hate so much as righteous crusaders for their respective causes, sick and perverted though those causes were.

Yet hate is indeed virtuous. There is, of course, a wicked form of hate to which Christians are prone and which has deeply damaged the image of Christianity. This form has given endless material to the anti-Christian propagandists of the present age.

But there is another form of hate, one that actually reflects an aspect of the very being of God, and is one which Christians should aspire to reflect.

In the 19th century, the brilliant radical thinker and essayist William Hazlitt wrote one of his most famous pieces, On the Pleasure of Hating. With his usual wit and devastating ability to observe the worst aspects of human behavior, he waxed eloquent about the fact that, while love was often transitory and—let’s face it—rather boring, hate was something which both possessed a perennial fascination and had seemingly limitless energy and creativity. As Hazlitt put it, “Love turns, with a little indulgence, to indifference or disgust; hatred alone is immortal.” Needless to say, when he came to give examples of real hate in action, he zeroed in on religion, citing the particular example of Edward Irving, the brilliant but tragic preacher of the early 19th century. Irving’s preaching of hellfire and damnation, according to Hazlitt, was a classic example of creative hatred in action; and his popularity was indicative of the appetite for such among the London crowds who flocked to hear him.

Hazlitt is, I think, right. Hatred is far more interesting than love. This can be seen throughout pop culture. Films and soap operas which tell simple stories of girl meets boy, girl and boy fall in love, girl and boy live happily ever after, simply do not exist. Nobody would want to watch such a storyline. Even at the level of entertainment, we need tension, drama, uncertainty, and excitement; and one way of achieving all of these things, perhaps the most obvious way, is to inject a little—or a lot of—hate into the equation. Hate, the very antithesis of love, stands so close to it as to be its evil and far more entertaining twin. Boy meets girl; they fall in love; then girl falls in love with someone else; then first boy hates both girl and second boy—that’s a more typical and marketable storyline.

As Hazlitt argued, hating is indeed pleasurable. But why? Well, on one level, hate represents the quintessence of fallen humanity. It is that aspect of fallen human nature which is the necessary counterpart to the central human difficulty: our insatiable need to love ourselves rather than God. To grasp this, we need to backtrack a little and analyze the problem of fallen humanity. Human beings were designed to find their full meaning and satisfaction in loving the infinite God. The Fall disrupted that and created a situation where the basic question of human existence—what should I love if I am to be fully human?—remained intact; yet the answer—You should love yourself! You should love the creature rather than the Creator!—left human beings perpetually dissatisfied and roaming from one experience or creaturely object to another, striving to satisfy with finite things that which can only be satisfied by the infinite God. Creaturely loves, if you like (and to borrow a memorable phrase from Top Gun), write checks that their bodies can’t cash. They promise satisfaction, but they serve only to exacerbate the human hunger further. Like crack cocaine, loving that which is creaturely can bring momentary satisfaction, but it is illusory—a fleeting sense of fulfillment which soon departs and leaves the individual craving more.

The Danger of Hate

And therein lies the dilemma for the Christian. Hate is not wrong. Forget the smug bumper sticker wisdom that informs us, “Hate is not a family value.” There are, in fact, many ways in which hate is a family value. I hate poverty; I hate pedophiles; I hate those who would seek to do my children harm. Indeed, the safety of my family depends on my hatred of precisely certain values and certain individuals committed to them.

Then, looked at through a more strictly theological lens, there are many things we must hate. We must hate all that stands in rebellion against God. And yet we also know that hate is a dangerous, seductive virtue, as easy to misdirect and to use for our own pleasure as anything. Indeed, hate as an aesthetic value can give endless amounts of entertainment, both as we witness it in others and as we indulge in it ourselves. Christians must hate; yet such hate is dangerous.

Of course, our non-Christian friends and neighbors are adept at spotting our tendency to hate. Most of my friends outside of seminary and church circles are those who would characterize themselves as liberal Democrats, with all of the social views that implies. And most, if not all of them, do not like evangelical Christianity. This is not because they find its worldview implausible; I doubt that many of them have a real understanding of the core theology of evangelical Christianity. It is because for them evangelical Christianity is synonymous with hatred, distinguished by what it is against—and passionately, unreasonably against—than anything it is for. And on this level, even the embarrassingly sub-Hazlitt prose of those condescending bumper stickers may have a valid point.

The problem with so much Christian hate is not that hate is wrong, but that it is perversely the object of our love. We can find ourselves loving to hate. Why? Because hate can be another of those creaturely objects to which we look for our fulfillment. Indeed, hate is the highest example of such self-love. We love to hate because it feeds that central myth of fallen humanity—that we are the answer to our problems, that we are the center of the universe.

Evaluating Hate

Two things are pertinent here, and point to the problem with so much of Christian hatred. First, there is the motivation of our hatred. Second, there is the selectivity of our hatred.

As to the first, all evangelical Christians would (I hope) say they hate homosexuality. Often, we try to soften the bluntness of this statement by drawing a distinction between loving the sinner and hating the sin. There are problems with that simple distinction, particularly when it comes to sexuality. In a world where people increasing identify themselves by their sexual orientation, it becomes more difficult—both practically and conceptually—to maintain this distinction. But we must try, especially if we’re to have any real loving concern for those outside the church.

The problem with hating homosexuality (and anything else forbidden by God) is not the hatred, simply considered. Rather, it is that the human heart will inevitably take this hatred and turn it into an object of love, which then serves to reinforce our belief in our own righteousness. “I thank you Lord that I am not like other men,” said the Pharisee in the temple, as he turned his contemptuous eye on the tax gatherer. Hatred of the corruption and greed which marked this other man’s life was driven by, and served, the Pharisee’s own desire to make himself a big man in his own eyes, in the eyes of others, and even in the eyes of God Himself.

On this level, I have a sneaking suspicion that much of what passes for evangelical hatred isn’t really hatred at all. Rather, it is love of self—a kind of love that is expressed through the idiom of hatred. For example, I hate gays so that I can feel as if my own heterosexuality makes me that much more acceptable to myself and thus God (whom I make in my own image). I hate atheists so that my own theism allows me to imagine I’m just a bit better. In other words, it’s all about me, it’s all about self-worship. And the hate I typically exhibit, even as a Christian, is rooted in love of myself – which is the very problem that lies at the core of the human predicament.

This is evident in the selectivity of hatred as well. There is plenty of evangelical hatred of homosexuality out there. One has only to insert the relevant words into Google to come up with dozens of Web sites devoted to such. Yet, while we are quick to hate certain things which bolster our own self-image as being zealous for the Lord, there are other matters which never seem to cross our horizons. Materialism, greed, anger, to name just three, are matters which could scarcely be described as the objects of our hatred. Again, the love of self is surely key in this. These are things which cut a little too close to home. To hate anger involves hating myself, the very thing I want to avoid.

Good Hate

So what constitutes virtuous hatred? We know that God hates certain things, since Scripture makes this clear. For example, Proverbs 6:16-19 outlines six things that the Lord hates and seven that are an abomination to Him, including those who commit murder and those who sow dissension. Hatred is, in a sense, an attribute of God. It is something which is essentially characteristic of God in relation to these things. And, as Christians and those made in the image of God, it is right, proper, and, indeed, virtuous that we too hate what God hates.

So how do we do this, bearing in mind that hatred in itself is a deeply and dangerously seductive thing which can more easily lead one into paths of self-righteousness than into the way of truth?

The first thing we need to recognize is that God’s hatred is not an end in itself, nor is it merely instrumental to some other end. He does not hate because He enjoys hating for its own sake. Nor does He hate in order to feel good about Himself. Rather, His hatred is directed toward that which does not reflect His own glory but in fact derogates from that glory. We might say that, for God, hatred is the natural, active, personal response to all of the havoc which willful human disobedience has introduced into the world.

It is analogous to my hatred, as a father, of pedophiles and poverty. I hate the former because of the potential damage they can do to my children, and I hate the latter for much the same reason. For me, hatred of such is rooted in a deeper commitment to and love for my children. Were I, on the contrary, to trust pedophiles and to desire poverty, then I would expose my children to danger or to hardship, something that no loving father should do. Hatred is a virtue in this situation. And Christian hatred is good hatred when it is motivated at the deepest level out of love for God, jealousy for the name of God, and for protecting His glory from those who would seek to insult Him.

So if the virtue of hatred lies in its motivation, how can I know that my hatred is driven by the right motives? The answer is: I can’t. One thing you can be sure of is that your motives for hating – on this side of eternity – will always be mixed. But the mixed motives I might have for loving my wife do not render my love to her equivocal, and so it is the same with hate. We are to hate what God hates; we are to work each day at bringing our minds into conformity with the mind of God; and we are humbly to seek His forgiveness that even the purest act of hatred on our part is horribly contaminated with self-love and personal agendas. In short, we are to sit under the regular preaching of the Word, where God’s Spirit can search us, try us, and transform us, and where we can be regularly reminded of the glory of God and the contrasting evil of human disobedience to His will. We are to expose ourselves each day to God’s holy Word in the safe and certain knowledge that doing so will give us the necessary reality check both on ourselves and our relationship to the world around us.

Opposition to God

Finally, we should bear in mind one crucial reason for virtuous hatred, particularly as it relates to other human beings — the thought that anybody might be able to remain adamantly and arrogantly opposed to God. This is where our hatred of the homosexual, for example, should become the flip-side of our love for the homosexual. It is not so much that we hate the sin and love the sinner. It is that we hate the fact that any sinner could continue to defy God.

Therefore our hatred is to be connected to persuasion. Hating the idea of rebellion against God, we should do our best to persuade those who are rebels to change their allegiance. Do we do this by screaming slogans at them across the barricades? Doubtful. Most likely we do it by behaving in persuasive ways of the kind laid out in Scripture: turning the other cheek, giving of ourselves to our enemies, making sacrifices to help those who despise us. We need to call them to account before our holy God, but we need to make sure we do this because our hatred of them as rebels manifests itself in love to them as lost sheep who are in urgent need of a shepherd.

Hatred is indeed a Christian virtue, but only when it is rooted in a deep love and jealousy for the glory of God. Such hatred can never be used as a means of idolatrous self-love, and it will always manifest itself in a manner that tries to persuade those in rebellion to repent and submit to God. Given this, hate is indeed a Christian family value, and one we should nurture and cherish.

Carl R. Trueman is vice president and professor of historical theology and church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, Pa.

Copyright 2008, all rights reserved, byFaith magazine. This article first appeared in the February 2008 issue of byFaith and is reprinted by permission.