I Gotta Stop Hating...

I just found Thinklings.org, and some of the articles reminded me of something I should have never forgotten: I gotta stop hating.

I've posted things here and elsewhere that were hateful of various people to various degrees, usually of vociferous or militant leftists. I don't think I actually wished anyone dead, but that doesn't matter; God said that hating people is as bad as murder. The platitude of "hate the sin, but love the sinner" is so easy to recite, it can make us feel as if we believe it, when many times that's not really the case.

Adultery is evil. Murder is evil. Stealing is evil. Lying is evil. That is written in stone, and there is nothing that can excuse those sins; they will be paid for by someone. Though it is wrong, it's all too easy to let the hate for those evil actions spill over to the person(s) who committed them. The anonymity of the web makes it even easier, and I suspect that is part of the reason why the rhetoric surrounding the current election seems much more venomous than before.

"Do not go on devouring each other, or you will be consumed by each other".

My initial reaction to the 9/11 attack could be summarized "nuke em all". My reaction to ALL instances of prisoner abuse - from the recent wave of beheadings, to Abu Ghraib, to the Hussein brothers' rape rooms, to the Hanoi Hilton, to Bataan, and everywhere else - is usually to desire a demonstration of the meaning of "eye for eye, and tooth for tooth" on the perpetrators. My reaction to the wholesale slaughter of civilians - from the Sudan, to Cambodia, to Stalin's & Hitler's millions, all the way back to Herod - is typically to hope the butchers experience a few "Mussolini Headkicks" on their way out. And it is tempting to wish that abortionists' mothers would have had abortions themselves.

That was wrong. Those thoughts put me in the same category as the criminals.

With God's help, I will try to stop. If you recognize this tendency within yourself, please consider doing the same. If hate wins, everyone loses.