Sunday Sermons
Lover or Hater?
Lover or Hater?
One of the favorite, relatively new words in our cultural jargon is the “hater”. Some use it to indicate a person who cannot be happy when someone else succeeds. Anyone who simply expresses a dislike of any kind may sometimes be called a hater. We live in a time when if you don’t like a song, a new band, a television series, or a person’s behavior, you might, out of jest or quite seriously be dubbed a “hater” regardless of whether or not you have excellent and quite legitimate reasons for not liking certain things. If you are a person of good taste and moral discernment, and are simply exposing the destructive choices of others for their own good, it is only a matter of time before you, yourself will be marked a hater.
Is Hate Always Bad?
One definition of hate is to dislike intensely or passionately; to feel extreme aversion for or extreme hostility toward; to detest. Obviously, then there are things that I should have a strong dislike and aversion to. In fact, these aversions to bad things I get from, and share with, my Creator.
- God hates or has an intense aversion to arrogance, lying, and murder (Proverbs 6:16-19).
- Jesus, who died for our sins, speaks of Himself as “hating” the deeds of certain individuals: “Yet this you do have, that you hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate” (Revelation 2:6).
Of course, hate is clearly bad when it is unreasonable, not based on fact, or is a strong aversion to what is good.
- Paul describes certain individuals who were “haters of good” (2 Timothy 3:3).
Therefore, according to the Creator of this world, a true “hater” would be someone who as a strong aversion to God, Jesus, or to the teachings in the Bible. Such an aversion is entirely unreasonable. For example, “philosopher Alvin Plantinga reminds us that theism (belief in God), or more specifically the Christian worldview, offers suggestions for answers to a wide range of otherwise intractable questions. In other words, the Christian faith has a remarkable range of intellectual resources that utilize the available evidence to answer many questions that would otherwise be conundrums” (That’s Just Your Interpretation, Paul Copan, p. 11). In other words, the Bible gives an answer to all the hard questions that no other worldview can answer. Loving what is good is important (Titus 1:8), for there is the danger of getting confused over what is good and what is evil (Isaiah 5:20) and equally over what I should love and what I should hate.
There is certainly no good reason why anyone would have an aversion to God or the Scriptures—unless, of course, they were wanting to do something wrong to begin with. Aldous Huxley admitted, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning, consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption…For myself, as, no doubt, for most contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired as simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom” (Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means, p. 270, 273). Years later New York University philosopher Thomas Nagel said something very similar, “I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear (of religion) myself: I wanted atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that” (Thomas Nagel, The Last Word, 1997, p. 130).
Is My Strong Aversion Normal?
It is sad that we live in a world today in which some people feel guilty for having a strong aversion or dislike for attitudes or behavior that the Bible labels as sin. Perhaps some feel this dislike means that they are not hip or with it. Yet God is ever current and cutting edge and He Himself says that He has a very strong dislike for certain behaviors that may even be "all the rage" in our present culture.
- “You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination” (Leviticus 18:22).
- “Whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord” (Deuteronomy 18:12).
The term “abomination” means something that offends the spiritual and moral sense of a person, and results in extreme disgust, hatred or loathing. Why feel abnormal for disliking what God dislikes? God created all men good and in His image, so it is only natural that you would share His feelings. Many of the things that God has labeled to be something that makes Him sick, such as sexual perversion, cross-dressing (Deut. 22:5) and witchcraft, are things that our modern society embraces and considers edgy and where it's at, and unless you've been immersed from every direction to be desensitized to vulgarity of such behaviors, it is only natural to get that same nauseous feeling that God has.
- “From Thy precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way” (Psalm 119:104).
Savor the significance of that morsel of truth for a moment. Have you lived long enough to see that when people move away from Scripture they always end up getting all things from good to evil, from love to hate, confused? I have never seen anyone successfully keep good and evil in the right category who did not adhere to the Scriptures. Without exception they end up supporting the wrong things and condemning the right things, endorsing and liking the bad things and hating the good things.
- The New Testament as the same concept. Paul noted that what people do in secret is often shameful or disgraceful (Ephesians 5:12).
Tolerance or Cowardice?
Years ago when I was not a believer I was moving in the same direction with other people in the world. I had a very "live and let live" kind of attitude. However someone was living morally, was none of my business. If it worked for them, fine. I certainly did not want to condemn anyone who was living contrary to the Bible. Yet I did enjoy poking fun at the people who were striving to live moral lives. When I judged them it did not feel like I was being judgmental. I certainly would have considered myself to be a very open-minded, loving and tolerant person. Yet, truth be told, such was not love. For at the end of the day I really did not care about what happened to the person who was living immorally. I did not care about their eternal destiny. I did not care about the earthly consequences that such a life brought. I cared far more about how I was perceived. And I cared far more about avoiding any kind of label, such as being “moralistic”. In addition, I found that what I first thought was courage, (that is, look at how I "courageously" defended those who were living contrary to the Bible—by saying things such as, "At least I am no hypocrite") was nothing more that cowardice— the truth was, I did not want to be stick out, be counted for standing for what was right and thus become the object of ridicule myself.
Real Love
“Son of man, I have appointed you a watchman to the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from My mouth, warn them for Me. When I say to the wicked, ‘You shall surely die’; and you do not warn him or speak out to warn the wicked from his wicked way that he may live…his blood I will require at our hand” (Ezekiel 3:17-18). In like manner, Paul observed that love takes no pleasure in sin, but rejoices in the truth (1 Corinthians 13:6).
Applications
- Genuine love cannot perpetuate lies. If something is wrong it cannot and should not be defended.
- The purpose of preaching and warning the wicked is not to make ourselves look better, but rather that they may live and not end up condemned.
- If no one warns the wicked, they are not left off the hook, they are still condemned. We do them no favors by never speaking up for truth. I cannot simply put my head in the sand and say, “What they are doing is none of my business”.
- Neither can I say, “I would warn them if they looked interested, but they look like they are not interested in the truth”. I must issue the warning whether or not they are interested in hearing it.
- My own definition of a lover or hater is that a true lover loves God and cares most about where people end up in the end. A true hater does not love God and does not even consider the eternal consequences of that disbelief.
Mark Dunagan | mdunagan@frontier.com
Beaverton Church of Christ | 503-644-9017
www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net
