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[Igel]

11. The view from inside is not the same as the view from outside.

That layer of bubble distorts things.

Hate is fairly easy. One cannot routinely justify hatred of people. On the other hand, it's not like a Xian is perfect from day 1, and some of the problems the Xian would denounce will likely continue until death, and in some cases probably not even be noticed. The view from inside isn't the same as the view from outside. We don't see ourselves impartially and objectively.

It's putting the cart way before the horse if we think perfection is required to start being a Xian.

There's good hate, but it's not usually hatred of people. Even for folk like Hitler and Stalin, I still feel sorry for them. There's still room for compassion and a hope that, even after they did what they did, they might change their thinking. Sure, punish them for it, but there's justice and then there's compassion; the two should never be confused, and one should not take the place of the other. Sum it up, if you want, as "Jesus died for them just as much as he died for the most righteous saint." And in my belief system there's still hope for even Hitler and Stalin some day. With the Nicene creed, I go for resurrection, not an immortal soul.

"Good hate" would be hatred of wrong. That might be treating the poor unfairly, in other words, injustice. On top of justice, though, doing what's required, there's treating the poor with compassion and sympathy. But there's a lot of wrong, and it's easy to confuse hatred for a person's actions with hatred for the person, and thinking that they're beyond redemption. Not my call.

My old church "hated" a lot of people, but when the distinction had to be made, it was always couched in terms of hatred for the wrong they did and hope that they'd repent, see the error of their ways, and do what they could to make amends. At the same time, the ministers also fell rather short of the expectations they had for themselves and others and hatred for actions and views sometimes merged with hatred for the people involved.

Now, violence against those doing wrong is fine. I continue to maintain that if I had a gun and somebody broke into my house and I caught him raping my wife, shooting him wouldn't be an unchristian thing. Suffering because of a belief in Jesus and God is commended, but not suffering because somebody decided he was horny and could get away with forced sex.

But what if the wrong they're doing is moral? "It's okay to hate immigrants because, really, they're not quite human. In fact, lets clear some land and go and terrorize a bunch of them now!" Hating the actions is one thing; but doing something about the actions is also called for, and that bleeds easily in actions against the people themselves. "I love you, but hate your sin, so I'm going to punch you in the face and break your nose" stops being fully coherent at the word "punch."

There's a class of Psalms called "deprecatory." It's not a large number of them. I've never understood exactly how to understand them given the NT. I can find dodges, joy at the implication of the bad things happening to others. So if Babylon's children have their heads bashed against rocks, perhaps there's joy at what will eventually happen ... But that sort of does violence to the text and context. It's like a lot of other passages, I read interpretations and they're really grasping to make the words mean what the author already believes. On the other hand, it might just be admitting that we're human.