I often struggled with this statement as a gay man coming to terms with his sexuality in the Presbyterian church. It felt like there was inherent permission to hate an aspect of me that some assumed was merely a behavior choice, while I knew it was more foundational to who I was as a person. I couldn’t separate the two—I wasn’t a man who was choosing to be gay, I was a gay man. How could I be loved as a human while one of the things that made me human could be hated?
I originally thought that these words, or a version thereof, had been uttered by Jesus himself. While I was looking for the biblical context for the phrase, I learned that the words “hate the sin but love the sinner” never appeared in the Bible. There are several attributions given to the origin of the phrase. One of St Augustine’s letter from circa 424 contains a Latin phrase that translates roughly to “with love for mankind and hatred of sins.” Mahatma Gandhi coined the actual phrase “hate the sin, love the sinner” in a book he wrote in the 20th century. Given the spiritual weight that these men carry, it is no surprise perhaps that I thought the phrase had been lifted from the New Testament. In some way, this knowledge gave me the permission to be more critical of the actual statement.
One reason this phrase has become so deadly is that it has been used by parts of the modern Christian church, and particularly by some who describe themselves as “evangelicals”, to focus on defining what should be hated, versus identifying who should be loved. While I am confident that neither St. Augustine nor Gandhi intended those words to be used as a justification for judgement, that is what is happening. In a way, invoking these words allows for a sense of self-aggrandizement. It becomes an excuse for casting shadows on others— “I don’t hate the person (because I am a Christian who hates no one), but I sure do hate the mistakes that that person makes and is making.” It gives one the permission to hate a “thing” which many than use to passively justify hating a “person”. It allows for a greater than/less than approach to people.
This separation of person and behavior is particularly troublesome because in separating the two, it becomes easy to focus on the “wrong” versus on the “right. We become compelled to measure the thing we see without taking the time to understand the actions that drive any behavior. In doing so, we dehumanize others and filter all their actions through a screen of black and white without taking the time to understand and appreciate the fallibility of the individual. We all have faults that in some way contribute to who we are as creations of God. We may make mistakes but those mistakes are often the result of another cause. To simply focus on the rightness or wrongness of an action doesn’t let us understand why we act in the ways we do nor does it give us the opportunity to help support each other in addressing the challenges that effect each of us.
The other troubling thing is that hating sin suggests that hating the outcome of sin is also justified and perhaps even mandated. How does this transfer to a child that is conceived outside the confines of a traditional family arrangement, an action that most Christians would deem as sinful? Does a child begotten of a hated sin deserve to be hated due solely to the nature of his or her conception? This is obviously a rhetorical question but it highlights another danger in allowing or advocating hatred—where does the hatred start and end?
If we need further proof that transformative love is all important (in this case loving the sinner unequivocally—which means loving everyone as we have all acted sinfully at one time or another), we can easily turn to one of this most often read wedding passages. The words from the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians are so familiar that I imagine many people are not even aware of their biblical origin:
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
I don’t know how one hates without dishonor, without being angered and without keeping record of wrongs. It seems to me that those three things are almost foundational elements of hate. Interestingly, earlier in the same chapter the author of Corinthians creates several counterpoint statements that highlight the primary importance of love. Right before this passage are several statements that talk about elements that the world and we place importance in, only to state that if one has those (e.g. success, wealth, etc.) but does not have love, one has nothing. It’s an important reminder to us to realize that love truly is more enduring and valuable than anything that fallible humans idolize. Hate is anathema to love—if we embrace hate we eschew love and thus have nothing. That logic is clear.
Lastly, the phrase allows us to feel justified in taking on the mantle of judge. In assuming permission to hate a sin we are also assuming the right to become spiritual and moral cops, lawyers, judges and juries all wrapped in one. This is not an easy task and we allow the execution of this role to distract us from the real role which is understanding and looking at our own faults before judging others. This is not to suggest that there should not be a moral code that can/should influence behavior (particularly behavior that affects others), but we need to make sure that we are fully capable of leading by example and providing support before we ever pass judgement. It’s when religious zealots cast themselves as “judges on high” that they start to lose sight of love. Loss love makes it easy to shun and shunning easily leads to hate.
If there is any one passage that fully illustrates the problem of hate existing alongside love, it is one simple sentence that can be found in the book of First John, chapter four:
“Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
I think it is hard to truly know love when one hates on any level. Hating sin gets in the way of honestly loving the sinner with all their faults. Hating in any form keeps us from knowing the power of love and the grace that we are each given.
I honestly believe that should there be a time when we are called to account for our actions as humans, we will not be measured as to whether we judged harshly enough, but rather whether we loved freely enough.