Perfect Hater

One of my cousins posted a link the other day that had that wonderful bunch of chaps from the Westboro Baptist Church in it. If the name doesn't ring a bell, that's the "God hates fags" group. If that still doesn't ring a bell, excellent. Your head will probably hurt less and your dinner has a better chance of staying down. Let's keep it that way.

That's enough about that group itself. I could go on a long rant that includes in it points about jacked up theology, wrong motives, and causing God's name to be blasphemed and dishonored. That wasn't my original intent, so I'll leave it at that. I wanted to see what the Bible said about hate -- in particular hate coming from God, as I've heard and read mixed things that warrant clarification.

The cliche phrase always comes to my mind -- "hate the sin and love the sinner" which sounds good to me. Interestingly, the phrase came from Ghandi, not the Bible. Even so, is it sound advice for the Christian? We'll see.

I wanted to get some other thoughts, so I went to a website that generally has very solid answers and read this:

"Even as Christians, we remain imperfect in our humanity and cannot love perfectly, nor can we hate perfectly (in other words, without malice). But God can do both of these perfectly, because He is God. God can hate without any sinful intent. Therefore, He can hate the sin and the sinner in a perfectly holy way and still be willing to lovingly forgive at the moment of that sinner's repentance and faith."

That sounds pretty harsh to me. I guess it's because I am human and don't get what "perfect hate" is and how God can love perfectly and hate perfectly at the same time. To me, God hating someone sounds more like "I want to squash you like a bug." That is obviously not the truth, otherwise we would have all be squashed long ago.

Next I did a search in the Bible for words with "hate" and found a lot of people hating people, people hating God, God hating people's actions, people being told not to hate and so on. I found the following three verses that deal with God hating people directly:

- "The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers." (Psalm 5:5)

- "The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence." (Psalm 11:5)

- "but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert." (Malachi 1:3)

So based on that, I must conclude that the website is correct, and God does in fact hate the wicked. Ouch! Remember that "the wicked" includes me and everyone else on the planet. We have all sinned against a perfect God and are deserving of nothing but his wrath.

Even so, God loved the whole world so much that he sent Jesus to take the sins of the world upon himself and be the payment we cannot pay. This love is expressed well in Romans 5:8, which says "God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." In other words, while we hated God and were his enemies, and while he hated us for it, he still loved us and died on a cross for us. I don't really GET that kind of love, deep down. I don't think I will on this side of eternity.

I think the explanation of how God's love and hate play together is explained well in this: "Mysterious but true is the fact that God can perfectly love and hate a person at the same time. This means He can love him as someone He created and can redeem, as well as hate him for his unbelief and sinful lifestyle."

Does that mean we should do the same? Absolutely not. We're flawed humans and told many times in scripture not to hate. We can't love perfectly like God, nor can we hate perfectly like God. The advice "Love the sinner and hate the sin" is absolutely appropriate for us mere mortals!