Any Christ follower should profess that it’s unhealthy and unChristlike to hate. Hate is destructive. Hate is the opposite of love.
Since childhood we have been trained that it is socially acceptable to hate certain peoples.My son has bought into it and already preaches it as true, and the reality is that you probably do too.
Think about the movies we watch. Think about the heroes we cheer for. It often guises itself as justice, but in the end it is really just justified hate. My son believes that it’s acceptable for a hero to kill a bad guy. In his dreams (literal dreams) fire breathing clocks destroy bad guys while the good guys stay far enough away from the first to stay safe. Bad guys die while good guys hopefully go free. When good guys die it’s a tragedy, when the bad guys die it’s justice. Bad guys deserve to suffer good guys deserve to destroy the bad guys. Both the hero’s and the villains kill, its just that the heros kill the right people while the villains kill the wrong people.
What an interesting line we’ve drawn too! Who decides who’s bad and who’s good? Those lines were easily distinguished when I was a child. But as I grow older I’m finding that the good guys do terrible things and the bad guys sometimes do good things. Was Steve McNair a good guy or a bad guy? Was my grandpa a good guy or a bad guy? It all depends on perspective doesn’t it? Last week Steve McNair was a good guy. This week he’s a bad guy. Was Martin Luther King Jr. a good guy or a bad guy? He had affairs, doesn’t that make him a bad guy? And yet his death is a tragedy. Oh how the lines are blurry!
As a follower of Christ I see him coming alongside the “bad guys” of his day and calling the “good guys” names. As a follower of Christ I hope that I can help to reshape my and my sons view of who is deserving of death, of what justice looks like, and of how I can love my neighbor (as a side note, in the Good Samaritan story Jesus teaches us that our neighbor includes our enemies). While there is always a need for consequences, I wonder if we’ve forgotten how much we have been forgiven and have instead begun to call our neighbors accounts payable…hmm…I think Jesus told a story about this…
peace.