toldailytopic: Is it always wrong to hate?

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bybee

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Traditio said:
What does "hate" mean?
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Can you answer "What doe's love mean"?
Are love and hate opposite ends of one continuum or are they two continuums?
Are love and hate back to back?
Or
Are love and hate at war with each other?
Which emotion fills one's heart mind and spirit?
Or
Is there, on this earth, in these carnal bodies, the necessity to feel both emotions?
bybee
 
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bybee said:
Can you answer "What doe's love mean"?
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Yes. When Jesus commands us to love our enemies, this is more or less a command to beneficience. Pathological love cannot be commanded as a duty. See the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Ok. Now tell me what "hate" means.
 
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Thunder's Muse

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I used to have a lot of hate. It was all I thought about. I became very cold and hard. I was depressed and angry all the time. The more my hatred grew, the further I moved away from God.
 
Traditio

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Thunder's Muse said:
I used to have a lot of hate. It was all I thought about. I became very cold and hard. I was depressed and angry all the time. The more my hatred grew, the further I moved away from God.
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Awesome! So tell me what this "hatred" is which separated you from God.
 
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Thunder's Muse said:
Hatred for what others had done to me. Hatred at the people who wronged me. Hatred of the life I had lived. Hatred of myself.
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You just used the word "hatred" 4 times. You told me who/what you hated. That's fine...but I still don't know what it was that you were doing to those things/people that you hated.

You hated them. What does that mean? I'm asking for a definition of the word.
 
The Barbarian

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Hate is that which separates you from God. It is the ultimate selfishness. C.S. Lewis had Screwtape the Devil describe it most chillingly. He said that every being exists only by holding back other beings. Even a rock, he said, exists only by virtue of excluding all other things from the position it occupies. Inside Satan's boundaries, all things are at war with all other things, only cooperating as long as one can gain something from it, but always fearing the other might take advantage himself.

Lewis perceptively has Satan leaving Heaven in anger after he talks with God and cannot believe that God does not have some ulterior motive for making humans and being kind to them.

Hate is fear externalized. It is spiritual weakness.
 
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bybee

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The Barbarian said:
Hate is that which separates you from God. It is the ultimate selfishness. C.S. Lewis had Screwtape the Devil describe it most chillingly. He said that every being exists only by holding back other beings. Even a rock, he said, exists only by virtue of excluding all other things from the position it occupies. Inside Satan's boundaries, all things are at war with all other things, only cooperating as long as one can gain something from it, but always fearing the other might take advantage himself.

Lewis perceptively has Satan leaving Heaven in anger after he talks with God and cannot believe that God does not have some ulterior motive for making humans and being kind to them.

Hate is fear externalized. It is spiritual weakness.
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That is a good point. However, there are times when fear is justified and one cannot simply do nothing.
"Perfect love casts out fear". I'm not there yet.
bybee
 
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bybee said:
That is a good point. However, there are times when fear is justified and one cannot simply do nothing.
"Perfect love casts out fear". I'm not there yet.
bybee
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:squint:

You're talking past me. I'm asking for a simple definition. You all keep using the word "hatred" as though it means something. What's the definition of the word? If you can't give me a definition, then I can only assume that your use of the word is meaningless.
 
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bybee

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Traditio said:
Yes. When Jesus commands us to love our enemies, this is more or less a command to beneficience. Pathological love cannot be commanded as a duty. See the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.

Ok. Now tell me what "hate" means.
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Hate can mean I am consumed with myself to the exclusion of others.
It can mean I am a law unto myself.
 
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Ok! Since none of you know what hatred is, I'll answer for you:

If hatred separates us from God, we cannot understand it as a pathological emotional state. Sin alone separates us from God, and sin is volitional. Consequently, if hatred is contrary to the Christian morality, we must admit that hatred, being contrary to duty, is not an emotion, but an act of the will.

If love is beneficience, hatred is malevolence.

Given the above, it should be evident why we never may hate anyone: it is never good to intend to harm anyone.
 
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Thunder's Muse

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Traditio said:
You just used the word "hatred" 4 times. You told me who/what you hated. That's fine...but I still don't know what it was that you were doing to those things/people that you hated.

You hated them. What does that mean? I'm asking for a definition of the word.
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Ah..okies...

I'll try to explain the emotion down as best I can.

I think at the very base of it, there is self-pity. Part of me enjoyed wallowing and playing the victim. It gave me a sense of justification, I guess. Quite passive aggressive...instead of fighting back, I just felt sorry for myself and played the role of victim to a tee.

Saddness. I was very, very sad. Just a deep, dark saddness that engulfed me.

Anger, which I think is an outward showing of saddness. I was angry about what had happened to me. I was angry about these people 'getting away' with being so hurtful towards me...

This then led to vengence. I wanted them to pay. How dare they ruin my life and get away with it?

Mixed with this was a deep dislike for myself.

Looking at it this way, it seems that hatred is a mixture of emotions, piled on top of each other, each feeding the other.
 
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Thunder's Muse

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Traditio said:
An emotion can't separate you from God, since emotion is just an inclination. Emotions are non-volitional.
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Emotions that intense can certainly make you feel seperated...from everything. That was kinda my point...the more these emotions took over, the further I felt I was from God. I was so consumed by these dark emotions, that I simply didn't want to look at the light.



Bingo. That's not an emotion, is it?
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Feeling vengeful certainly is an emotion.
 
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Thunder's Muse said:
Emotions that intense can certainly make you feel seperated...from everything. That was kinda my point...the more these emotions took over, the further I felt I was from God. I was so consumed by these dark emotions, that I simply didn't want to look at the light.
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But, for all that, can we pass moral judgment on mere feelings?

Feeling vengeful certainly is an emotion.
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The inclination to vengeance is an emotion. The intention is not. That said, is there mere inclination morally blameworthy or praiseworthy?
 
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Thunder's Muse

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Traditio said:
But, for all that, can we pass moral judgment on mere feelings?
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LOL. Mere feelings... :)

I don't think emotions can be judged morally, I agree with that. However, my experience with said emotions was not a positive one and not something I recommend.



The inclination to vengeance is an emotion. The intention is not. That said, is there mere inclination morally blameworthy or praiseworthy?
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One could say the intention rises from the emotion :)

Anyhoo...same as above. :)
 
The Barbarian

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It's like anger. Anger is never a simple emotion, but is generated by more fundamental things like fear, frustration, horror, and so on. You're right in the sense that one can decide whether or not one will hate. One cannot decide whether or not one will fear, only what one will do about the fear.
 
Lovejoy

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bybee said:
I have quoted him before but C.S.Lewis has an acceptable rationale for our ability to feel hatred. He states that we can feel hate so that we shall hate that which is evil. In order to fight that which is evil we must feel intensely the rightness of the struggle and the danger of the evil.
For instance, many studies have shown that child molesters cannot be cured. We have an obligation to protect children from them. I believe they must be incarcerated for life.
We must not fall into complacency about evil. The attitude that "It doesn't affect me so I have no obligation to get involved" is destructive to the fabric of society. The Nazi's made their deadly march over the German people, most of Europe and the Scandinavian countries. The Russians, the British and the American's combined efforts finally stopped them.
Even so sterling a human being as Dietrich Bonhoeffer finally renounced pacivism and entered into the plot to kill Hitler.
I believe we must utilize our ability to hate in order to fight evil.
This is not a license to engage in unwarranted brutality but it does demand that we fight with every weapon at our disposible, as necessary, and perhaps we may lose our lives in the process BUT not our souls.
bybee
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You guys already have a heck of a discussion going on, and I do not wish to disrupt it. Quickly, though, I love Lewis and have recently finished all three volumes of his collected correspondence. Bonhoeffer is personal hero of mine, and the Cost of Discipleship rarely leaves my bedside. You will always get far citing them to me!

What you have given me most to think about, is the difference between hating evil, and hating a person. I have usually considered there to be a great difference between the two. However, is hating nazism different than hating a nazi? Lewis felt that, at the core of any undesirable, was an immortal soul that, in its glory, we would be tempted to fall down and worship. Am I required, ethically, to hate anyone I am willing to brand as evil? Or am I required to refuse to believe that anyone is truly evil (as opposed to evil in action alone), that everyone, at their core, is a creation of God and worthy of love?
 
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