I once heard someone pose the question, do you hate or love better?
I thought this was a very interesting question. I have sort of a default reaction to these sorts of questions, but then the longer I think about them, the more nuanced they get.
It’s both easy and hard to hate. It’s easy in the sense that you can very easily let hatred consume every part of your day to day life, but it’s hard because in clinging so strongly to those feelings, we remain closed off and angry. I think humans can only handle so much hate.
As Christians, we know that we are called to forgive and to love, even our enemies or those who persecute us. This is a radical difference from the ways of the world, the ways that would have us clinging to hatred and disagreement.
To love also has different levels of difficulty. People you care about, people who treat you well, they’re easy to love. It’s almost involuntary. But the people who do you wrong? The people that don’t try to love you back? It is hard to love them.
We know we’re called to it, but we can tend to drag our feet a bit, because it’s not always simple. But just because it’s hard doesn’t make it bad. Some of the hardest things we will do in our lives will be the most worthwhile.
Back to the original question: do we hate or love better? Is our response in the face of trial, adversity and hurt to love others? Or do we brood and harbour anger deep down? When something makes us bleed, what comes out? Jesus, or hatred?
