Hatred

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines hatred thusly:

HATRED:
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English hete; akin to Old High German haz hate, Greek kēdos care


Date: before 12th century
 
1. Hate - intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury b : extreme dislike or antipathy : loathing - extreme disgust : detestation - extreme hatred or dislike : abhor(rance) - to regard with extreme repugnance

2. prejudiced hostility or animosity

Unfortunately, the word "hate" has become a daily use word that means anything from the dictionary definition to a child's dislike of Brussel sprouts.

The word hate is not a mild one. It is one that expresses a deep desire to have nothing to do with a person, an action, or a feeling. It expresses a desire to see someone or something go away never to return. It seeks a form of death to something or someone that we no longer desire to have contact with or from - it is a literal condemnation of life.

When we are told to love our fellow men, we mere mortals take that statement and twist it to suit our evil hearts.

We hear "love your fellow men who think like you and support your political leanings".

We hear "love your fellow men who enjoy the same activities and social organizations".

We hear "love your fellow men who can help you up the ladder of life's successes until you don't need them anymore".

We hear that we can pick and choose based on personal bias and decide who is "worthy" of the bestowal of our earthly favor and thus who, by default in the equation, is "worthy" of condemnation and extinction due to studied neglect or outright violence to their persons.

We don't hear anything that conflicts with our personal view of right and wrong at all. And that is the problem.

We are NOT sent to the earth to reshape and fashion it in our own image. We are sent here to learn to be like the Master and reshape and fashion ourselves in HIS image. Until that process is complete, we actually are guilty of hating our Creator and His Creation - namely, ourselves.

We don't hear the true admonition of the Savior at all. The Savior wants us to love Him and serve Him and our fellowman. The word hatred also has another meaning - to put an end to something as in, a hatred to sin. He wants us to hate (or put an end to) sin through His matchless and glorious Atonement, which was performed in our behalf. It can not only wipe away our sins, but remove the stains of hatred passed through generational lines and ignorance. His Atoning blood can clean us up and make us presentable to the Father.

Our world has an infantile behavior set that tells us 'you hurt me back to the 4th generation, so now I'm gonna hurt you up to your 4th generation of posterity in order to get payback for the wound inflicted on my ancestors.'

That is the Levitical Law in action. An eye for an eye creates BOTH physical and spiritual blindness no matter who the intended target is or what the justification.

Our desire to have hatred and revenge in our lives and by our choosing isn't making our world a safer or kinder place in which to live or raise our children. Instead, it is teaching that if someone hurt your 4th great grandfather, that everyone who looks remotely like the offender becomes, by proxy, the target of rage.

That isn't the higher law of the Savior. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind both physically and spiritually due to wounds that are inflicted in place of the opportunity to repent and be forgiven. Our Savior would have us learn from both our mistakes and the mistakes of our forebearers. We don't have to create generational errors, we can choose to do something different no matter how those who came before chose to act.

In Jesus Christ, the Levitical and Mosaic laws of performances and ordinances were completed and He, the Paschal Lamb, became the literal blood sacrifice for the sins of the world... the sins AND the ignorance.

Through the Savior, we receive a great and powerful blessing. We can be free of our hatred for our self and others through Him. He WANTS to help us. He WANTS to bless us. He WANTS to lift us from our pitiful mortal circumstance into a glorious and brilliant future in His Kingdom. He wants us to be like Him!

Then, in the ultimate expression of hatred, we all-knowing mortals look our Savior in the eyes and tell him 'No thanks, I'm good - I don't need your help.'

But we aren't good. We are corrupt and filled with the worm of hatred that acts as a parasitic voice telling us who is worth loving and who deserves to be condemned to live outside the light of our love.

We come to the earth and immediately the divisions begin. Rich, poor, black, white, brown, male, female, Republican, Democrat, Independent, Chinese, Mexican, American, Mormon, Methodist or Jew.

By our labels ye shall know us...

We all bleed the same red blood. We all shed the same tears, although for a myriad of reasons having to do with the hatred we feel from others and for others and toward others. We all want to be loved for who we are.

But, in a twisted sort of logic, we all want to reserve the right to determine whom we will cast our love upon in a tacky game of keep-away that we were NEVER taught at our Savior's knee. Someone else stepped into the place of the Master Teacher and usurped the lesson plans.

The author of our problems is the same one who sought and still seeks the misery of all mankind. Satan doesn't want us to love each other because then he loses his influence. He doesn't want us to bury the hatchet because he can't enjoy the bloodbath if no one inflicts the strokes that draw the blood.

He is our enemy, but we willingly embrace him as our friend because he whispers and shouts that our hatred of one another is somehow justified. And if we aren't sure, he will provide the justification. We DESERVE to hate them because they are different.

We want to hate because that serpent's voice speaks to us telling us that we are 'so much better' than they are and we 'deserve' our blessings and the power they give us to choose whom we will love because they, conversely, 'deserve' their misery and unfortunate circumstance.

I don't want to hate anybody. I want to experience the kind of "look into their eyes and see who they really are" kind of love that Jesus Christ has for us all. He wants us. He loves us. And He shed his precious blood for every single one of us in an individual way because he knows us as individuals, warts and all.

We can't change the history of our painful collective and individual pasts. We cannot go back with a politically correct eraser and make it all better. Hurts happen. Slights occur. Terrible deeds have been done. We can't always fix it and money isn't the answer to all suffering. Life creates scars. We need to stop reopening the wounds because scars that have been reopened don't heal well.

Sometimes, we all need to be more willing to say 'let it go and let God', and we need to leave it with Him and trust in Him to take care of it in His own due time, not in our own. We need to stop classifying people according to the boxes we mortals have created and instead seek to know people by the heart created within them by God.

Can we stop being labels and start being more than the sum of our parts? Can we start loving each other in a Christlike way and acting like Children of God, which we really are?

Stop the hate. It's tiresome and it's an old song we've allowed to play for far too long.