re hate the sin scott prism gatech edu scott holt writes hate the sin but love the sinner i ve heard that quite a bit recently often in the context of discussions about christianity and homosexuality but the context really isn t that important my question is whether that statement is consistent with christianity i would think not hate begets more hate never love consider some sin i ll leave it unnamed since i don t want this to digress into an argument as to whether or not something is a sin now lets apply our hate the sin philosophy and see what happens if we truly hate the sin then the more we see it the stronger our hatred of it will become eventually this hate becomes so strong that we become disgusted with the sinner and eventually come to hate the sinner in addition our hatred of the sin often causes us to say and that is an assumption on your part where is your proof that one always will degenerate into hating the sinner because he hates the sin i am reminded of the civil rights movement in america it is true that many individuals hated the proponents of racism it is also true that many individuals hated segregation and discrimination with their whole heart and never degenerated into hating the individuals who practiced it dr king s message was this love the individual the loving of the individual would transform him into a friend however this did not take away his hatred for segregation his hatred for injustice in the summary of the law christ commands us to love god and to love our neighbors he doesn t say anything about hate in fact if anything he commands us to save our criticisms for ourselves so how are christians supposed to deal with the sin of others i suppose that there is only one way to deal with sin either in others or ourselves through prayer we need to ask god to help us with our own sin and to help those we love with theirs only love can conquer sin hatred has no place the best way to love someone is to pray for them i would ask did john the baptist practice love when he criticized the jewish leaders of his day did jesus practice love when he threw the moneychangers out of the temple we must have at least a distase for sin we must in order to fight it in ourselves also we must be ready for the call from god to call sin by its right name jesus loved everyone but he called sin by its right name it is true that love for others is to guide every step of our walk but it is also true that sometimes the love for god calls us to stand up for truth competition is the law of the jungle cooperation is the law of civilization eldridge cleaver sherman cox ii scox uahcs cs uah edu
