Hate

You cannot hate Jews or Muslims or immigrants and be a Christian.

You cannot hate homosexuals or transsexuals and be a Christian.

You cannot hate Democrats or Republicans and be a Christian.

You cannot even hate criminals and be a Christian.

It’s simple, really. You cannot hate anyone and still be a Christian.

It’s not just me that says that. Paul said it, too. In Titus 3:3, he says that being “hateful” and “hating one another” is part of our past self, before God’s saving grace entered the picture. Now we are to be “gentle, showing every consideration for all people.”[1]

John said the same thing, but much more emphatically:

The one who hates his brother or sister is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.[2]

Everyone who hates his brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life remaining in him.[3]

If someone says, “I love God,” and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.[4]

While John talks about hating a brother or sister, that doesn’t mean we are free to hate non-Christians, as Jesus made clear:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors, do they not do the same?[5]

Love and hate in this context are choices, not feelings. We can choose to be kind, “showing every consideration for all people,” as Paul says. Or we can choose to be inconsiderate, mean, or even vindictive toward the objects of our hatred, treating them not as we would like to be treated, but as we think they deserve to be treated.

Such hatred is simply inconsistent with what Jesus and his disciples taught. There is no place for it in true Christianity. Anyone who tells you differently is walking in darkness.

[1]. Titus 3:2

[2]. 1 John 2:11

[3]. 1 John 3:15

[4]. 1 John 4:20-21

[5]. Matthew 5:43-46; see also Luke 6:27=35