I felt a sinking sadness when I read Sean Mac an Airchinnigh’s 1/22 letter to the editor. His letter brought anguish to my day because of its twisted non-scriptural portrayal of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. No, Sean, those who emphasize God’s love have not created “a God of their own liking” and do not “wink at the incredible evil of abortion”. Nor do we deny that God will punish the unrepentant abortionist. Our hope is that our lives’ representation of God’s love will shatter the blindness and draw people to Him, “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
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In the Old Testament, I count the words love, loves or loved 377 times, and in the New Testament 204 times. Contrast this to the words hate, hates, and hated—mentioned 23 times in the Old Testament and 14 times in the New. Love is mentioned over ten times more than hate. Of the hate entries, the majority refer to behavior or attitudes: hating sin (Ps 36:2), wickedness (Ps 45:7, Heb 1:9), evil (Ps 97:10, Prov 8:13, Amos 5:15, Ro 12:9), wrong paths and falsehood (Prov 6, 26:28, 13:5, Ps 119:104-163), robbery and iniquity (Isaiah 61:8). Even the scripture about one of the six things God hates—“hands that shed innocent blood” (Prov 6:17)—it refers to the action, not the individual since it does not say “people that shed innocent blood”. There is only one mention of God hating an individual, and that was Esau (Malachi 1:3), and I cannot find a single Bible verse where God admonishes His followers to hate anyone.
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Other scriptures including the word “hate” actually counter it: “Do not hate your brother” (Leviticus 19:17). “Do not hate those that hate you” (Ps 139:21). “Do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27). “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness” (1 John 2:9). “If anyone says, “I love God’, yet hates his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20). |
For a poignant scripture that demonstrates God’s view of how we are to love: “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him” (1 John 2:9). Based on the preponderance of God’s love language in the Bible, it is clear that, God did in fact say in a multitude of ways to “Love the sinner and hate the sin”.
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Jesus’ own words summarize my biblical perspective: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matthew 5:43, 44). Sean, you wrote that Christ’s followers are supposed to hate “murderers” and other “doers of iniquity”. If you believe that we are to be like Jesus, you cannot reconcile your hate with Jesus’ words at His crucifixion when he said about his murderers, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). |
I can only speculate about what Sean Mac An Airchinnigh’s agenda is, but I guarantee that it is not the same as God’s, for “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (1John 4:16). |