Should Christians be hated?

[plaingirly]

Random question! I opened my Bible on Matthew 10 and verse 22 says :

And all nations will hate you because you are my followers. But everyone who endures to the end will be saved.

I think there is another verse similar but can't remember it.

So if someone is really a follower of Jesus will people hate them and if people don't hate them are they not strong enough in their faith?

I don't really want to be hated! Also at work we have to get along with people so having them hate us wouldn't be ideal. Unless the verses are more specific or maybe aimed at the disciples.

She's had some help, she is having some more now as she recognised she was ill again. Poor mum. It's very hard for her to differentiate between the demands of her faith and the demands of her illness.

[Laughs] Pedro, clearly you meant that as a stumper.

Short answer - No, loving someone does NOT mean accepting their crimes along with them.

But why is the expulsive logic of shunning you apply to Saville -and me, actually - any better than what you condemn in the RC church? You sound like an imitation of your caricature of it.

Saville is dead, so there's really no opportunity to behave lovingly to him. If he were still alive and showed up at our church I wouldn't take him behind the bike shed and knock him about, no. (I'd bloody want to, but that's not an ok impulse).

But I would want justice to take its course. I would turn him over to the police. No priest would give him absolution unless he turned himself over to them and took whatever punishment was meted out.

Long answer...all of us do things that are terrible. God loves him. Jesus loves him.

All of us are horrible and terrible. Yet all of us can be loved.

What's the humanist answer? Would you tolerate him? Saville is a secular problem...

seeker, I know the RC church doesn't seem loving to everyone. Just it does to me. May I ask what your experience is? Obviously very different from mine...

See this is where I'm confused. On the one hand you say that the RC church seems loving to everyone, but then on the other hand you are saying that it's god and Jesus who would love Jimmy and not the priests of the church or even yourself.

I think we're all clear that taking him out back and walloping him isn't an acceptable action, but if in your head you'd want to, that's not really showing him love.

So I think I'm with seeker here in that the church doesn't appear to love everyone. (and for the record, I'm just using Jimmy as an example, you can replace with anyone who's committed similar heinous crimes).

I'm also not saying that not loving everyone is wrong. I think it's absolutely the right stance. Some people really don't deserve it.

I'm confused too at where one (as a human) should draw the line of someone being TOO heinous to be included in the human circle of love. Murderer, abuser, man-slaughterer, GBH-er, drunk driver, fraudster, con-artist...?

I must say I have a great problem with this love your enemies business. Wicked people need standing up to not loved and forgiven.

Hmm, yes, I would agree they do need 'standing up to' and justice to be done. But this does not preclude love - it's what grace is all about. Imagine if the wicked person was your beloved child, seriously gone off the rails - would you not forgive them, if they were truly repentant? The whole point of grace is giving another chance - now you may think there are those who do not deserve this, and so may I. But God doesn't, while also being utterly just. And one day justice will be seen to be done, and forgiveness given to those who ask in sincerity (which means a change of action, not merely the words).

That's the thing, Lizzy (and Pedro). We humans can't easily love people like that. But Jesus could, and he did. he asked God to forgive the very people who were killing him. He consorted with people his own society saw as outcasts. Tax collectors, the racially no-go, and prostitutes. Did they deserve it? Do I? Do I really DESERVE love? In one sense nobody does and in another sense everyone does.

Madhairday is right too, and I think her answer is probably the best one. Justice does NOT preclude love. If Jimmy Saville was my son - um, gulp - I would still love him though I would also think he should be punished for his crimes.

If is was my son and if he were truly sorry, then perhaps. But some people don't just commit one crime and regret it. Some commit over and over and over again and have no remorse. Also the vast majority of the world's population are not my son.

You seem to be in awe of Jesus being able to forgive people like that, but I don't see that as a virtue, I see that as foolish.

But either way, my main confusion was that you were saying that the church is loving to everyone, yet neither you as a church goer, nor the priests would love Sir Jimmy if he popped in for tea and biscuits. So which part of the church would love him?

Pedro, I think your idea about love is different from ours. It's not a warm fuzzy feeling. It's actions.

If Jimmy arrived for tea and biscuits after mass I'd be polite. That's all. Nobody would say, oh look, there's a criminal, how darling.

Neither you nor I know if Saville felt any remorse. God knows, however.

Fascinating that you see Jesus' forgiveness as foolish. Why? Are we in Nietzsche Street? I hope you aren't going to confirm my longstanding tendency to think atheists are pretty goddamned hard and self-righteous. I hope you mean that forgiving some criminals is just turning them loose to kill again... though even then it's you who now sound like the Republican Right.

I hope you mean that forgiving some criminals is just turning them loose to kill again...

Kind of.... That and forgiving, say, an abusive partner for them to hit you again.... Anything along those lines. Once, perhaps, but again and again as some people do is foolish and dangerous.

I think the main problem is the belief that God created us all and therefore we can all be loved by him (incidentally, I have no desire to be loved by a god, or by jesus). Whereas, in reality, some people are just raving psychopaths who have no remorse for their actions or simply believe that their highly immoral actions are within the realms of acceptable behaviour.

Well, doh.

Forgiving someone doesn't mean going back to live with them and letting them hit you again and again. Forgiving someone doesn't mean helping them escape justice.

It means not seeking revenge on them. Not blasting them, or setting fire to a house with them inside, like many abusive partners seem to want to do. Not imposing condign petty punishments on them. Not arming yourself with a bunch of killing weapons to make sure you can do them in.

We aren't btw loved by God because he created us - that is, the belief that God loves us doesn't depend on the idiocy of creationism. We are loved by him because he is himself. Love is natural to him. It's what he is, what he does. And if you don't long for love and approval, then you are very unusual.

Raving psychopaths - yes, apparently one person in 20 is a sociopath. (It's more like one in 15 in Oxford.) I don't know how God sees them. I'm inclined to see them as disabled, handicapped, like cancer sufferers. The real problem is that often people look up to them (even in Auschwitz, apparently). What I admire about Jesus is that he didn't.

Human society (because of the world's miseries) requires law/justice/protection of the innocent, so loving actions might well involve shutting them away. We have to think like Kant and like Bentham.

But I think it's unlikely that the Jewish and Roman people who killed Jesus were all psychopaths. I don't think blasting everyone evil that he met would have made the world a better place. It would just have encouraged people to worship force and therefore to follow the vilent around.

But love and forgiveness are not the same thing. And in fact the term love is fairly ambiguous, I think you would have to define love before discussing it, much like you have to define god before arguing his existence.

No, they aren't. Indeed.

And forgiveness and letting somebody off the hook aren't the same thing either.

Love is basically putting someone else's needs on a par with your own. Doing unto others. What's your definition?

Forgiveness isn't a feeling imo. For me it's cutting someone/org/whatever loose - my feelings don't have to be involved. I may privately rant and rage about them to God, but at the end I'd cut them loose TO GOD. To do with what he deems appropriate. I am assiduous about this. Thankfully, I can trust him to do the right thing.

Which doesn't mean I wouldn't shop someone who was eg perpetrating criminal activity, and it doesn't mean I wouldn't support punishment for said crime/s. I have a social/legal responsibility as a citizen.

I pray for my enemies because 1. I was told to (and I believe this is FOR MY BENEFIT, to keep me healthy) and I trust that authority and 2. they wouldn't do the things they do if they were well.

The gentle Jesus meek and mild stuff is a class thing imo and doesn't relate to the type of person he was/is. his compassion is tough, if you like, not wet and wimpy. I got caught up with being wet and wimpy for a while and, thank goodness, I saw the light on that!

as for people hating you - i don't think you can be a christian for too long before it becomes apparent that christians are 'hated'. Or christianity, if you like.

I pray for my enemies because 1. I was told to (and I believe this is FOR MY BENEFIT, to keep me healthy) and I trust that authority

Can I ask how this keeps you healthy?

It keeps me from hating them, or holding resentment towards them. If I pray that they will be blessed - with or without feeling, it is irrelevant - then it is an effective way of handing over the poison of resentment.

\someone once said that holding onto anger/resentment is akin to holding burning coals to your chest. Who'd want that? Not I. What the offender did was bad enough, don't want to allow the crime to eat into my soul for ever more.

That's not to say that I don't often sometimes, as I said, keep a running dialogue with God about my hatred/resentment towards whomever. I guess that is all part of 'handing over' said hatred/resentment, by talking to God about it. The conclusion is, as a discipline, to hand over the person/deed to God; for him to do with it as he sees fit.

It's a relief, actually. To not have to hold on to ills. I mean, what a weight!

Sorry, I might have missed the point, but what does that have to do with your health?

erm.. chronic anger/resentment/hatred is bad for your health all round . Physical, emotional, psychological, spiritual health. Toxic. Cancer of the soul, some say.

So what actual ailment would you get from that?

What do you think Pedro?

I was asking you because I don't understand what you are saying so why are you asking me?

I think Springy has put it very clearly, Pedro. Unforgiveness and bitterness can eat into the soul and leave a person depressed, weighed down, bitter, angry. It may lead to more serious physical and mental ailments (unless you do not count mental health as a disability?) and will always lead to something lacking in someone's life. The relief to let it go is immense. I'll never forget taking the step of forgiving my bullies at school - I thought it may mean that I was condoning their actions, but in fact all it did was release me from the poison they spoke into my life. I was a changed person with new confidence, and I never once condoned, simply let go, giving my feelings over to God. I couldn't make up 'feelings' of forgiveness but the power in using the words is unimaginable.

That should say unless you do not count certain mental health conditions as disabilities

sieglinde, I've really enjoyed reading your posts.

Pedro, not to answer for springy (I'm sure she's very capable of doing that herself!) but off the top of my head I would say that harbouring anger/resentment/hatred etc can cause stress/anxiety/depression just to name a few ailments.

I think Springy has put it very clearly, Pedro.

Then we're clearly not readily g the same things. There was no clarity. However, it seems to have been cleared up now by others that it's a mental health issues. Would have been much clearer if that had been said in the first place rather than anger, resentment and hatred which are feelings not ailments.