I received a question on whether or not love and hate can coexist. Here's my response.
Love directs hatred toward anything that interferes with love. It is in the mere existence of love that you develop the passion to defend it. Why would you "take a bullet" for someone you love? Because you "hate" the bullet that threatens to destroy them. You have nothing against the bullet as it is, but rather when it's misused you are passionately willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to counter it's misuse. Hatred (in the context of coexisting with genuine love) is the passion to defend love, not destroy it.
God's wrath is aimed at whatever interferes with His love.
So in light of this, I pose a question back a you. Did Jesus die on the cross because He hated sin or because He loves us?
2 comments:
It's easier for me to see Jesus being motivated by love for us, than it is too think of him laying down his life because he's driven by his desire to destroy sin. But it seems that God enjoys containing paradoxes since we know they can't frustrate Him. So that would mean that he's able to make his attack against the kingdom of this world, and the sacrifice that was necessary, represent and be made up of his hatred for sin -- a hatred that was so intense that He would lay down His own deity -- a hatred set on fire because of his knowledge of the pain it was causing those he loved.
Wow, hate and love as two sides of the same coin -- scratch that, as the peaks and valleys on the same side of one coin.
In answer to the question, yes? Because He loves us so much, He hates what sin does to us. Thhe problem lies in that fact that we think those are mutualy exclusive and they are not.
But I do like the way you reasoned the love and hate thing. It makes me think about a concept I learned about light and dark, and hot and cold. There really isn't and actual think that is dark or cold, it's just the absence of light and heat. You can't ever go completely dark or completely cold, but you can get close. We call that lack of light, dark. So, in essence, lack of love would be hate? It's not an absolute or quantitative, but always in relation to love. Hmm... mulling that one around in my head...
Post a Comment