A truck had run off the road and crashed into a tree forcing the engine
back into the cab. The driver was trapped in the twisted wreckage. The
doors were crushed and bent out of shape, and he had his feet caught between
the clutch and the brake pedal. To make matters worse, a fire started in the
cab. Concerned people on the scene began to panic, for it was obvious that
the driver would burn to death before the fire engine could arrive.
Then a man by the name of Charles Jones appeared, and he took hold of
the doors and began to pull. His muscles so expanded that they literally
tore his shirt sleeves. People could not believe it when the door began to
give way. Jones reached inside and bare-handedly bent the brake and clutch
pedals out of the way, and freed the man's legs. He snuffed out the fire
with his hands, and then crawled inside the cab, and with his back against
the top lifted the roof so other spectators could pull the driver to safety.
We have all heard stories of how mothers have lifted cars, and done
other superhuman things to rescue their children, because they are motivated
by love, but this man was a stranger. There was no relationship to the
driver. If he was a brother, or son, or even a good friend, we could see how
love would motivate one to such a feat of strength. But this was not the
case. What then was the motivation that enabled this stranger to do such a
powerful act of love? It was hate. Charles Jones was later interviewed, and
was asked why and how he was able to accomplish such a Herculean feat. He
simply replied, "I hate fire." He had good reason for his deep hatred, for a
few months earlier he had to stand by and watch helplessly as his little
daughter burned to death. His intense hatred for this enemy gave him
enormous strength to fight it. His hate led him to a great act of love.
On the other hand, love can lead to hate. Most of the stories of hatred
you read about are directly connected with love. Just recently I read of a
man who shot his wife and her two brothers because she was leaving him. The
statistics show that most murders in our country happen in families. People
are most likely to kill those whom they love, or once loved. Love is the
cause of so many acts of hate.
What a paradox, that these two strong and opposite emotions can so often
be linked together. Paul in verse 9 puts them side by side, and urges
Christians to feel them both in the same breath. He says love must be
sincere, and then demands that we hate what is evil. Paul was not the
founder of this paradoxical partnership of love and hate. The unity of these
two emotions runs all through the Bible. I counted 27 verses in the Bible
where love and hate are in the same verse together. We remember the old
song, Love and Marriage that says they go together like a horse and carriage,
but it is equally Biblical to say, love and hate go together. Listen to a
partial reading of how the Bible links these two emotions in partnership.
Psalm 45:7 "You love righteousness and hate wickedness. Therefore God, your
God has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy."
Psalm97:10 "Let those who love the Lord hate evil for he guards the lives of
his faithful ones."
Eccles. 3:8 "There is a time to love and a time to hate."
Isa. 61:8 "For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and iniquity." The
love-hate partnership begins in the very nature of God. God could not be
sincere in his love if he did not hate that which destroys love. To be God
like and Christlike is to combine in our being, love and hate.
Rev. 2:6 Jesus says, "...You have this in your favor: You hate the practices
of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate."
You cannot be a good Christian, and a truly loving Christian, if you do
not feel hate for that which is the enemy of love. There are many more texts
we could read but the point is established: Hatred is a legitimate emotion
in the Christian life. In fact, it is a vital emotion if we are to be
balanced. This is, however, one of those dangerous truths that can lead to
disaster if it is not understood. These paradoxical partners can still be
bitter enemies. There is still the major distinction to be made between the
hatred of evil, which is good, and the evil of hatred, which is bad.
Hatred is still a deadly foe, and an emotion that has to be kept in
check, or it can lead us to become very un-Christlike, and totally out of
God's will. I John 4:20 says, "If anyone says, I love God, yet hates his
brother he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has
seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen." Hate destroys relationships of
both God and man. Prov. 8:36 has wisdom say, "All who hate me love death."
Hate for what is good is love for what is evil, and when these two emotions
are reversed from the way God intended them to function, they are destructive
of all that is of value in life.
The traditional, and normal, concept of love and hate being opposites
and enemies is valid and true. It is just that it is not the whole truth. There is more,
and we must understand the more, or we will not be in control, and use these
emotions the way God intends. The area where we are weak is in this area of
understanding the paradoxical partnership of love and hate. Emotional health
depends on our growth in this area. To be what God expects us to be, we need
to understand the reality of what is called ambivalence. This word stands
for that psychological experience in which opposing emotions, such as love
and hate, joy and sorrow, or desire and fear, exist at the same time within
the same person. Paul is urging Christians to be ambivalent by telling them
to feel love and hate at the same time. It is a cliché among Christians that
we are to love the sinner and hate the sin. It is very hard to separate the
two, and so we really are feeling both emotions at the same time toward the
same individual. This is ambivalence. This leads to much emotional turmoil
in the person who does not see this mixture as legitimate.
In marriage, for example, it is a common cause for the breakdown of
relationships. Many mates have no understanding of the paradoxical
partnership of love and hate. They are locked into a narrow view of reality
that says, I cannot love that which I hate, or vice versa. They discover
that they feel hate toward their mate for a variety of things, and thus they
conclude, love has flown the coop. I lost my love. Because of this false
psychology that says, love and hate cannot dwell together, they let their
hate boot their love out. It happens all the time that people who really
love each other get divorced just because they hate aspects of each other.
Children run away, and mates shoot each other, and all sorts of tragic
behavior takes place because people do not understand it can be valid to have
hate for people you love. Almost every child hates their parents at some
point in life. Sometimes they verbalize it, and are not as subtle as little
Bryan. Little Bryan had just been punished, and he sat in silence at lunch.
Finally he looked up and said, "God can do anything He wants to can't He?"
"Yes dear," his mother replied, "God can do anything." Bryan looked up again
and said, "God doesn't have parents does He?" God doesn't have parents, but
He does have children, and that relationship also leads to ambivalence. God
knows the mixed emotions of love and hate.
Way back in the fourth century St. Augustine described the divine
ambivalence. He wrote, "Wherefore in a wonderful and divine manner, He both
hated us and loved us at the same time. He hated us, as being different from
what He had made us; but as our iniquity had not entirely destroyed His work
in us, He could at the same time in every one of us hate what we had done,
and loved what proceeded from Himself." The cross becomes the central focus
of the divine ambivalence. The cross is where God's wrath and judgment were
poured out, and Jesus bore the hatred of God for man's sin. Yet the cross is
where the love of God is brightest, for there He gave His Son, and the Son
gave His life to atone for sin, and make it possible for all men to be
forgiven, redeemed, and reconciled to Him in love.
Never again, and no where else do we see the paradoxical partnership of
love and hate working together on so grand a scale. If God did not hate sin,
there would be no cross, and if God did not love the sinner, there would be
no cross. The cross is a love-hate symbol of the divine ambivalence. So
what does this mean for our emotional system? It means we need to accept our
own ambivalence, and not flea from it, or seek to suppress it, as if it made
us abnormal. Accept ambivalence as part of what it means to be made in the
image of God, with the capacity to both love and hate.
If mates could see it is okay to hate those we love, they would not let
their hate destroy their love. Love makes its highest investments in a mate.
Love is a commitment of trust.
When that trust is violated, or rejected, it is one of life's sharpest pains.
It hurts for someone you love to be unloving, and that hurt, if persistent,
leads to hate. It does not mean you cease to love the one you hate, for if
you didn't love them it would not hurt, and you wouldn't hate them. The more
you love the more you hurt when love is rejected, and so you can hate most
those you love most.
Christians, for example, almost never hate atheists. Most Christian
hatred is directed toward other Christians in the family of God, because they
are hurt by other Christians, and not unbelievers. You do not expect an
unbeliever to be loving, and so you can handle their rejection. But when
another Christian rejects your love it is a hurt that can lead to hate. This
explains why the worse wars are civil wars. They are battles of people who
are close, and should be loving. Family conflicts are the most dangerous of
all, because they are between people who love each other, and thus, they
generate the hottest hostility.
The dangers of the love-hate ambivalence can be controlled by awareness
of what is happening, and an understanding of the why. We need to see these
two opposites can be partners, and not feel the stress of a civil war when we
have them both together. We need to see that love and hate have more in
common than we realize. They are both hot emotions, and you can be a flame
with love, or a flame with hatred. Both are called passions that make the
blood boil. Water can't quench the fire of love sang Solomon, and the
burning fire of hatred can quickly turn relationships to ashes.
Both of these are intense emotions that tend to want to dominate the
whole personality, and push out all other interests. Love and hate both long
to consume the object of their passion. They are so different, so much
alike, because they both are based on the same value system. Paul says to
hate what is evil, and to cling to what is good. The Greek word for cling is
the same root Paul used in Eph. 5:31 where we read, "For this reason a man
will leave his father and mother and be joined unto his wife." To cling to,
or cleave to the good is to love the good, and want to be one with it, as we
in love long to be one with our mate. Jesus used the same word as Paul uses
here in Matt. 19:6. "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother
and be united to his wife." The words cleave, and cling to, and adhere to,
runs all through the Bible to refer to the strong desires to love others and
God.
If we are to cleave to, and strongly love others and God, and the good,
the true, and the beautiful, it follows, as night follows the day, we must
hate what destroys these values. You must hate what is false, and what ruins
relationships between yourself and others. If the world we live in is a
world of good and evil, then a healthy and realistic emotional system must
experience both love and hate. If you love anything, you must hate
something, and if you hate anything, it is because you love something. You
cannot have the one without the other.
Life is a mixture of good and evil, therefore, the balanced life is one
of mixed emotions. Ambivalence is not neurotic, but it is normal. It is the
mixture of opposites that gives life balance. The reason you can eat a
dessert even after you can't eat another bite of the food you have been
eating is because it is different. Your body can take on a little more
because of the variety, but any more of the same is intolerable. The
balanced Christian life is one where there is no fear of any emotion because
there is an awareness that variety gives life balance. Some hate is needed
in a loving life to give balance. Just as recipes call for opposites to
create a dish pleasing to the palate, so the recipe for the mature Christian
life calls for opposites to be pleasing to God. The salt and the sugar go
into the dish as partners. The sweet and the sour do also, and so love and
hate are the paradoxical partners that make the Christian life a tasty treat
to God.
We all know, however, that too much of a good thing can really ruin the
whole dish. Proportion is the key. You cannot just drop a package of pepper
in a dish that calls for a spoon full. Ingredients have to be measured to be
compatible partners in making a good dish. So it is with love and hate, and
all other emotions of life. God is love, but also has hate. Love is the
dominant character of God's being. Hate is only a part of his personality
that enables him to be realistic in relating to a fallen world. John 3:16
could have said, "God so hated the sin of the world that He poured out His
wrath on His Son that man might escape it, and be saved." That would be
true, but that is not the way the good news is communicated. It says, "God
so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." Love is the dominate
motive of God's will. His hate is always secondary, and under the control of
His love. When we can combine these paradoxical partners in this same way,
we will have the balance necessary for mature Christian living.
Note that Paul in verse 9 surrounds the legitimate hate of the believer
with the dominate love. Love keeps hate in bounds. It is okay to hate as
long as you cling to what is good. You must refuse to let hate rob you of
your key values that you love. If hate makes you lose the values you are to
cling to, it becomes an evil, and not a partner of love. It is okay to hate
all kinds of things about those whom you love, just as long as you go on
loving them for their values. It is all right to hate the fact that your
mate was so conditioned by their upbringing that they cannot express
affection the way you desire. There are all kinds of defects in all of us
that are hateful, because they fall so far short of the ideal. Feeling
negative about this is realistic, but it becomes a destructive evil when we
do not promote love as the senior partner in this pair of paradoxical
partners.
The Bible makes it clear that every human being is worthy of love, no
matter how far they fall short. It is a Christian obligation to see that
even our enemies have value, and are to be objects of love. It is the task
of love to see all that is truly hateful, and yet find a way to make love the
dominate motivation. Edwin Markham put it so well in his poem.
He drew a circle that shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle that took him in.
You can hate who you will, for what you will, and be in the center of
God's will if you have a sincere love that strives always to cling to, and
cleave to what is good in that person. You cannot be healthy without hate,
but you cannot be happy unless your hate is always an assistant to love. Let
hate dominate, and you will be a sick and sad person. It is not enough to
love flowers to be a good gardener. You must also hate weeds. But pity the
poor gardener who becomes so obsessed with fighting weeds that he no longer
has any time to enjoy flowers. This is what happens to those who allow hate
to become the senior partner, and dominate their life.
In the healthy personality, the love-hate partnership operates with a
proper balance in relationship to oneself. We all hate our own defects,
weaknesses, and sins. We get disgusted with ourselves often, but we also
quickly forgive ourselves, and press on, because our self-love dominates over
our self-depreciation. When we make an error on the road that causes the
other guy to curse and shout, we feel a sense of guilt for our mistake,
but it does not last long because we are so understanding of our humanness.
We quickly forgive ourselves, and get on with living. We take a great step
upward in maturity when we can do this same thing with others. Love is the
senior partner in this paradoxical partnership when we can soon get hate
calmed down so that love can make the key decision on how we will respond to
the folly of others.
The two key steps to developing a healthy emotional life are, (1)
Accept ambivalence- it is okay, and even God like to have mixed emotions.
(2) Advance love-to the level of senior partner. In other words, love is to
be the leader over all other emotions. It is vitally important then that
love be real, genuine, and sincere. Love is the leader and it must be
authentic. Love is the key to all the other emotions doing what they ought
to do. That is why Paul begins this passage with the demand that love must
be sincere. We all know that anything of great value tends to be
counterfeited, and love is the highest value in the world of emotions, and so
man has developed many ways to fake it.
Mark Twain dedicated one of his books to John Smith. It was not because
he had any affection for a man by that name, but because he discovered it was
the most popular name in the country, and if everyone by that name bought his
book, he would have a decent profit. Deception in love is common because
people really believe all is fair in love and war. A French restaurant has
come up with a gimmick that enables a man to appear very loving and generous.
When he and his partner come in, both are given a menu, but his has the real
prices. Her menu has highly inflated prices, so that when he orders, she is
struck dumb by his elaborate generosity for her. Not knowing it is not
genuine generosity she will supposedly be deeply grateful to him for what she
feels is sincere love. The world is full of this sort of thing, and the
Christian is not beyond playing the same game.
Love is the first fruit of the Spirit, and the highest Christian virtue,
but faking it is not legitimate. In fact, if you get good at faking it, you
may never develop the real thing. Nothing leads to superficiality in
relationships faster than those that are based on flowery language alone.
The Christian needs to watch this in relationship to God, and not build up a
vocabulary of high sounding praise which does not represent his heart. God
knows when love is mere lip service. He has had all of history to experience
the insincere. It does not take long for a mate or a friend to also learn
that your talk can be cheap. A Chinese proverb says, "Never praise a woman
too highly. If you stop, she'll think you don't love her anymore; if you
keep it up she'll think she's too good for you."
Sincere love seeks to learn the need of the other person, and meet that
need. You don't go by proverbs or other people's advice, or faking it for
effect. You find the need and you meet it. If your mate does not like a lot
of flattery you cut it out. If they crave more, you give more, because you
chose to love and satisfy that need. Sincere love is like the love of
Christ. He saw man's deepest need and He met it. Jesus said that the Good
Samaritan was an ideal example of loving your neighbor. He saw the need and
he met it. It is sincere love that will keep legitimate hate in its place,
and prevent illegitimate hate from fulfilling its evil intention.
John and Mary Edwards were driving along the New Jersey Turnpike when
they saw a young soldier thumbing a ride. They picked him up, and noticed he
was very sad and sullen. Mary began to talk about her son who had also been
in the service, and they invited him to come and have lunch with them. They
observed a change of attitude, and he began to relax. He told of his
homesickness and frustration with army life. He began to smile. When they
reached his destination, John pressed a folded ten dollar bill into his hand,
and a slip with their address saying, when you get out of the army, come see
me and I'll give you a job. The young man had tears in his eyes as he
mumbled his thanks. Two weeks later the Edwards received a letter from him.
He told of how bitter and resentful he was that day they met. He was AWOL
from the army, and was in a spirit of hatred for everyone. He said he had
made up his mind to kill the first person who picked him up. You were the
first, but you were so good and kind to me I couldn't do it, so when you were
not looking I took the bayonet out of my hand, and slide it under the rear
seat. You will find it there, and they did.
Sincere love encountered bitter hate, and they were not partners, but
fierce foes. Love drove hate from the field and won the battle because it
tried sincerely to meet the needs of that young man. They let him know that
it is a world where people do care, and there are values worth living for.
Love is stronger than hate, and when they are enemies, love is to be so
sincere that it will drive hate from the field defeated. But even when they
are partners, love must see to it that even though hate adds to the whole
picture, it is always to be the case that the ultimate goal is the goal of
love.
When hate arises in your feelings, do not fear it, but call on all the
forces of love within you to surround it, and contain it, so that it does not
move you toward goals displeasing to God. Make sure it moves you to figure
out how love can use the energy of hate for its goals. This is the Godlike
and Christlike way to use these paradoxical partners.
