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 my question is whether that statement is consistent with christianity i would think not hate begets more hate never love 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 scott i too dislike the phrase hate the sin love the sinner maybe the definite article is also part of the problem since it seems to give us license to fixate on our brother s peculiar pecadillo which we have managed to escape by a common grace of heredity economic situation or culture our outrage at evil is too often just a cheap shot that said i don t think scott has adequately explored the flip side of this coin namely the love of righteousness in the beatitudes jesus blessed those who hungered and thirsted for righteousness in the new testament it is never enough just to behave well one should always actively desire and work for the cause of good in that sense it should be impossible to remain dispassionate about evil and its victims even when these are its accomplices as well maybe mourn sin love sinners catches the idea slightly better than hate but only slightly since grief usually implies a passive powerless position a balanced christian response needs grief love and carefully measured constructive anger jesus has all three the european pietists during wwii whose response to nazi atrocities was devoid of anger do not fare well as role models however much love or grief they exemplified my sister is an actress in new york and a christian a few years back jack her long time professional friend and benefactor died of aids impoverished by medical bills estranged from his family and abandoned by most of his surviving friends only my sister and brother in law were there with him at the very end in her grief over jack s death my sister found quite a few targets for anger callous bureaucracies the rigid self protective moralism of jack s family the inertia in christians response to aids and yes even jack s own lapse in morality that eventually cost him his life jack himself shared that last anger brought up with strong christian values he was contrite over his brief dalliance with promiscuous sex long before his aids appeared i imply no moral judgement here about jack s innate sexual orientation n b maybe the hardest job is making our anger constructive van kelly vek research att com
