Err on the side of love

I've been thinking about how we're supposed to respond to pagans. I've heard educated Christians declare that we should love them while hating their sin. I've heard others say that we should despise them. Some say we should seek them wherever they may be. Others say we should ignore them altogether. Persecuted Christians in Rome went to death rather than rise up against their murderers. In our time, a widely recognized Christian, Pat Robertson, intimated that the U.S. government ought to assassinate tinpot dictator Hugo Chavez.

The unknown psalmist declares toward his oppressors in the midst of the Babylonian captivity: "How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock." Is that an instruction for God's people, or an expression of anger and despair? When God instructed his people to slaughter every man, woman, child and animal in the enemy camp, was that a standing invitation to kill the infidel, or a specific order for that place and time?

It seems that the answers to some questions like this are fairly clear. But others are harder to get at. In part we are bound by our language; there are different uses of "hate" in the Bible. A Psalm tells those who love the Lord to hate sin -- surely this is the use of hate in all its vigor. Christ tells those who would follow him that they must hate their own families -- this means, rather than violent anger, a casting aside of anything that would come between the faithful and God. We see a similar usage when we are told that the Christian is to hate his own life to have it eternally.

There are similar problems when we consider the world. The Bible says that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. But we are also told to hate the world. The intricacy of language enters again; the world can mean God's beloved creation, or it can mean the pagan culture.

It's on my mind of late because my children recently heard someone we respect announce that the good Christian is to despise, and even hate, non-Christians. Hate them. I suppose this person had one of those other meanings of "hate" in mind, and wasn't advocating a holy purge of infidels. But I found myself in the position of needing to explain it to my children.

The nuances went through my mind -- how we are to be in but not of the world, how God does indeed hate sin, how not all people -- at least according to a great portion of Christian sects -- will be saved. How we are to be holy -- separate -- but at the same time we are to carry the Good News. There I had three little boys staring up at me, asking why I just whisked them away from this person holding forth, and I was mentally trying to parse the dogma into digestible bites, feeling inadequate as a father and a Christian.

So I told them that God wants us to love others. Don't hate anyone, I said. Love them as best we can, and pray for them.

I suppose a team of theologians could have a field day with all the doctrinal errors in those instructions. But I'd rather err on the side of love. It seems that hate comes easy enough. It's love that we struggle with.