Introduction
The Hatfield and McCoy feud was recently on TV; this is one of the saddest things I have ever watched. It is so wrong for people to hate people just because of their name or because of something they have done in the past. When Christians hate people they are in direct violation of Jesus’ command to love one another, and it will not be ignored by God. Jesus said we are to love everyone, even those who do us wrong. In fact, Jesus went so far as to teach that anyone who will not forgive another person will not receive God’s forgiveness. (Matthew 5:43-48, Matthew 6:14-15, Luke 6: 27-36) When we refuse to forgive someone we are actually condemning ourselves before God.
So you see, the Hatfield and McCoy feud may have been a macho thing in the eyes of humans, but when Satan brought hate into the Hatfield and McCoy families he condemned to hell those who yielded to hatred. When we allow ourselves to fall before emotions like: hurt feelings, dislike, jealousy, envy, and anger we are standing at the doorway to Satan’s path of hatred … a path that leads to a place where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. When we feel these emotions building up within us we need to instantly fall on our knees and repent, seeking God’s forgiveness and our deliverance from the horrid sin of hatred. Nothing good came out of the hatred expressed by the Hatfields and McCoys, and nothing good will come out of our hating someone and refusing to forgive them from our heart.
What is hatred?
We use the term hate in a most casual manner, which leads to many misconceptions regarding the act of hating. Yet, there are serious similarities between a child hating broccoli and a Hatfield hating a McCoy. We can attempt to modify our act of hating with synonyms such as: abhor, abomination, aversion, detest, disgust, dislike, grievance, ill will, loath, no love lost, repugnant, repulsive, and scorn. It does not matter how you wrap it up; however, when we have a negative opinion about someone it is wrong regardless of the magnitude of our dislike.
Psychologist believe that hatred is actually a mental state where our ego is at odds with something that makes it feel uncomfortable. This is not a temporary emotion. Ergo, hate is a fixed mental state identified by a negative attitude toward a person, group, or object. Psychologists also believe hatred can produce a long-lasting mental condition that can evolve into an even deeper and more sinister mental condition: if we continue to entertain the feelings produced by hate. In fact, a 2008 study published by scientists at University College London revealed that test subjects' brains, which were mapped with an MRI scanner, while they looked at pictures of the people they hated, observed intense activity in the putamen and insular cortex. It is interesting to note that these two brain regions are also active when a person sees a picture of a loved one. What makes this even more interesting is the fact that these two brain areas also prepares the body for movement. Now, here is the kicker. If the test subject is experiencing love the areas of the frontal cortex associated with judgment and critical thinking typically become less active than normal. You might say that love dulls our capability to think logically. On the other hand, if the test subject is experiencing hatred brain activity in the frontal cortex remained active and actually increases with the intensity of hate. This indicates that hate is not just a spontaneous emotion. It would appear that hate involves a certain amount of thought and reasoning. If the scientists are right, this means that hate truly can become a mental state which destroys our capability to love, and hate may permanently warp our capability for rational thought.
The part of the brain used to love is the same part we use to hate; ergo, you cannot have love and hate in your brain at the same time. This supports what John wrote: “If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. (1 John 4:20) We can fool ourselves into believing that we can both hate and love but this is a lie from Satan. Love, like hate, is not an emotion … it is a mental state. You can fool yourself into thinking you love when in reality you are just experiencing passion, caring, obligation, or other similar emotion. It is spiritually and physically impossible to have true love and hate in your mind at the same time.
Think about this for a moment. There is considerable evidence that hate is more than just an emotion. Physical and psychological testing reveals that hate is probably more of a mental state than a simple emotional reaction. When we allow negative feeling to exist in our mind they can actually change the chemistry of our mind causing us to allow our mind to be influenced by hate. Hate is a mental state, which has a negative impact on our thinking and on our spiritual wellbeing.
The impact of hate
It is obvious from both psychological and physiological testing that hate is far more than just a negative emotion. Hate may be initiated by some emotional event, but just as soon as you start embracing negative thought it rapidly changes into a mental condition. More important, in my opinion, it also transforms into a negative spiritual condition. If left unchecked, hate will also have a negative impact on our bodies and our relationship with other people. Never, think that hate is just an emotion you can ignore and it will eventually go away.
Hate can, and sometimes does, result in serious negative actions but that is not the norm. In most cases hate simply destroys the hater’s life and their relationship with other people. It is a sad thing to watch someone hate and see how it can eventually transform them into a detestable beast. Even when the person they hate is oblivious to being hated the person doing the hating is consumed by the mental state of hating. Hate can ultimately manifest itself in irritability, lack of metal focusing, stomach distress, headaches, intense frustration, emotional problems, and even in violent verbal attacks. In extreme cases, hate will result in the hater perpetrating violent actions against the person they hate.
Of all the harm that hate can do to a person its attack on our spirit has to be the most devastating. When we hate we separate ourselves from God and from the power of the Holy Spirit. We know that things like: tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, death, angels, principalities, powers, things present, and things to come cannot separate us from God. (Romans 8:35-39) What does separate us from God; however, are elements of hate such as: wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking (Ephesians 4:30-32) because these are the roots of bitterness, which defiles a person and does away the grace of God. (Hebrews 12:15) Hate replaces love and without love it is impossible for us to please God.
Hate is a mental state, which has a negative impact on our thinking, on our body, and on our spiritual wellbeing.
Hating – how to stop.
There is little profit in pointing out a danger if you do not offer a potential solution. I am comfortable sharing scripture that is straight forward but I am a bit uncomfortable with details that are not clearly addressed. The New Testament that tells us that we are not to harbor bad feelings about someone and that we are to forgive everyone, but scripture does not detail exactly how we are to stop harboring bad feelings about someone. The best I can do is to share what the Holy Spirit has led me to believe about dealing with others.
How do you stop harboring bad feelings toward someone who did you wrong? The fact is most of us cannot! The only way I know of to really forgive is to draw close to God and allow Him to heal our mental and emotional problems. Yes, you had best believe harboring ill feelings toward someone is a problem. The only way hatred can exists in us is if we allow Satan and his demons to dwell in us. We can try to change the name of hate to: dislike, displeasure, distaste, or some other more gentle sounding word; the fact is however, hate by any other name is still hate. If we harbor the least bit of hate in our life we cannot have the Holy Spirit influencing our lives. Scripture makes it very clear that it is as impossible to embrace both the Holy Spirit and hate as it is to have light and darkness existing in the same place at the same time. (Habakkuk 1:13, 1 Corinthians 3:16, 1 John 3:4-10) Thus, if we have not truly forgiven someone then we still hate them; therefore we must repent and get rid of our hatred if we are to forgive them and restore a right relationship with God.
We know that love comes from God and hate comes from Satan. It is logical that, if we want to stop hating, we must draw close to God. If we draw close to God He will force Satan to flee from us; then and only then, can hate be truly cleansed from our heart. (James 4:7-10) How do you draw close to God? I know of four things that guarantee we will be drawn close to God, but these four things cannot be taken lightly. Drawing close to God is a serious business; you might say: drawing close to God is a matter of life and death. Please understand, this is not to be taken as our performing some ritual that brings you closer to God. This is a process of our yielding our will to the will of God, which will produce a change in our spiritual life. If you truly want to be drawn closer to God here is what I recommend:
1. Heartfelt prayer. This is not head-prayer, which is just praying to be praying. In heartfelt prayer we die to our own self-interests and totally submit to the will of God. We do not pray so that God will do something for us; we pray so that God will help us do something for Him. We do not want to stop hating because we know it is a sin; we want to stop hating so that the love of God can flow from us to others. We sacrifice our desires so that we can become a better representative of the Kingdom of God. Not an easy thing to do but it is the only way I know of to honestly communicate with God. As you learn to pray from your heart you must also learn to listen for God’s small still voice in your mind. Now, don’t go off thinking this is some sort of mystical ritual. You know deep down inside of you if you are willing to yield everything to the will of God. Talk to God, bow down before God, weep at the feet of God and beg Him to fill you with His Spirit so that you can totally yield your will to His will. (Romans 12:1-2) Remember, when we are in prayer we are not using an earthly weapon. Prayer is a spiritual weapon and we must learn to wield this weapon as a spiritual warrior. (2 Corinthians 10:3-6)
2. Study Scripture. This is not reading the bible for the sake of reading the bible. This is not going through the bible trying to find isolated verses that seem to fit our way of thinking. Pick a book, James is a good place to start, pray for the Holy Spirit to anoint you and free you from all earthly influence and personal bias. Then, read the entire book as if it were a letter from a dear precious friend. Do not, I repeat, do not try and analyze what you are reading. The Holy Bible is a living spiritual document and it must be read in the spirit if we are to see the message. Our human mind is incapable of seeing the truth, if it were; everyone would repent and submit to the will of God. We need to visualize our spirit as starved and dying in a harsh desert land, which is exactly what is happening if we have hate in our heart. Our spirit is starving and the word of God is the only thing that can nourish it back into good health. When we see the word of God as the only nourishment that can save our soul, and strengthen it for the spiritual battles ahead, then and only then, will the word of God come alive and infuse our soul with the power of God. This will never happen as long as we are alive. We must die! We must die to our self-interests before the Bible can become a living spiritual entity, instead of just a good book. (Hebrews 4:12-13) When we go to scripture knowing we are starved near unto death we will fall upon it and devour it like manna from heaven.
3. Fight against wrong thoughts. Hate produces destructive thoughts, which if allowed to continue will feed back into our minds creating an even deeper hate, which will produce even worse destructive thought. As soon as Satan puts a wrong thought in our mind we must actively resist thinking about that thought. We should rebuke Satan and the thought he has given us; we can get rid of the thought by thinking about something Godly. If we start talking to the Holy Spirit about something positive it will get our mind refocused and we can totally resist the influence of Satan. Even the simplest bad thought can lead to our spiritual death and an eternity in hell. (James 1:14-15) We cannot easily stop Satan from putting wrong thoughts in our mind but we have total control over what we do with those thoughts. We will embrace them as a child of Satan or we will reject them as a warrior for God.
4. Respond to the Spirit of God. God does not force us to do anything. It is only when we communicate with God, through His word and prayer, that our hearts will be touched by His spirit. It is only after our hearts have been moved by the spirit of God that we can get our minds right and truly forgive. Whatever we do, we must not confuse the difference between our mind controlling our actions and our heart controlling our actions. Our heart will control our actions when our mind is first submissive to our heart; assuming our heart is submissive to the will of God. We cannot fake it with God. We can do all kinds of loving and good things because our mind told us to, but if we are not first totally submissive to the will of God our righteousness is nothing more than filthy rags. Actions that are not preceded by prayer and study are just human actions. (Romans 12:1-2, 1 Peter 1:13-15, 1 John 2:15, Colossians 3:1-17) In the power of my mind I can fight against negative thoughts, but this is only my doing. But, to forgive from my heart I must first repent and then yield to the Spirit of God.
It is so important for us to realize that we cannot truly forgive through the power of our own mind. If we feel no remorse over our harboring ill feelings toward someone it means we can never truly repent and if we do not truly repent we can never receive forgiveness from God. We need to understand that hate is a serious evil in our life. Scientists claim that there is a thin line between love and hate, and I think this makes complete sense. Hate is the opposite of love just as darkness is the opposite of light. Love is a tremendously powerful emotion and hate is also a tremendously powerful emotion. Love is a powerful positive force in our lives and hate is a powerful negative force. Remember, God is love and when we hate we totally separate ourselves from God. That is why Jesus said God cannot forgive someone who still has hate in their heart. We cannot get rid of the hate until we have repented and truly forgiven the other person. We must forgive and we must forgive from our heart not our head, which is why only God can empower us with the capability to truly forgive.
Will the four things we have just looked at allow us to tap into the power of God and rescue our soul from the evil wasteland our hatred has thrown it into? Yes! Will most people undertake this journey to save their soul from the flames of hell? It is unlikely! The fact is most people do not want to stop hating. People feel like they have been wronged and Satan drives them to seek revenge: even if it is only by hating the other person. Remember, words such as: dislike, distain, displeasure, or distaste are just other ways of saying hate. All these feeling are just forms of hate, which brings us closer to Satan, and the closer we come to Satan the more our mind is given over to thinking bad thoughts about someone. The more we dwell on our hurt the more we hate and the more we hate the more our actions are controlled by hate. When we allow hate in our lives it means we have rejected the one true living God and that we have become Satan’s pawn.
