Jesus Loves Everyone I Hate?

 

While on vacation recently, I happened across a fridge magnet with this motto on it “Jesus loves everyone you hate.” To be fair, there were numerous magnets of various sizes usually with a rainbow backdrop to subtly convey who this slogan is aimed at, and geared toward.

The slogan goes beyond the neutral and nebulous term we denote for God, which can (and does) have a million definitions. Rather, it focuses on the person of the historic Jesus Christ, the founder of the Christian church and faith, who is endlessly mimicked by Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, Roman Catholics, et al, with carbon copy, fraudulent renditions of the genuine article that do not hold up to the litmus test of Scriptural scrutiny. To that end, let’s rule those out before going further in this discussion, and consider what it being said by this seemingly gentle effort to stop hatred toward people of different persuasions.

 

Several assumptions are made in this brief statement. The first that leaps out to me is that it is assumed I hate people, or more specifically, any people group. Second is that Jesus loves the very people I am claimed to hate, which means He accepts what (and whom) I reject. Why do I assert that acceptance is synonymous with love? The same reason I postulate that rejection of a practice or belief is tantamount to a confession of hatred.

 

Who am I, as a professing Christian, hating in this instance? It would seem, especially in light of the rainbow backdrop, that it would be the LGBTQ community as a whole. What rationale led to the notion that I hate such people? I propose that it is because I do not accept or condone the sexual aberration referred to by and large as a persuasion or lifestyle. Let us be clear, here. I make it my goal to hate no one. If there was any person on earth that warrants my hatred, it is my father, who did terrible things to my family in my youth. But those things, and those feelings are personal and correlated directly to the man himself. Yet, no matter what I thought or how I felt when I was young, I no longer harbor this resentment or animosity toward my father. Do I like him? No, but I am commanded to love him, and so I have forgiven him. He isn’t a part of my life any longer, but I mean him no ill will, and do not pray or hope for misfortune or judgment to fall on him. He may, by God’s grace, receive the same salvation I possess through the same gospel, and the same God who gives it. Hatred, like love, is a personal matter and cannot honestly be blanketed on the canvas of an entire demographic; I fear that people who say “I hate (fill in the blank)!” when speaking about some supposed group have had personal dealings with an individual’s practices or beliefs, rejected them, and then projected them onto every such person, so that now the individual so hated is the poster child for an entire demographic that are strangers to the one spouting hateful rhetoric.

 

Hatred needs some kind of connection with the individual it is aimed at, much like love. I love my family and my friends because I know them; I do not love strangers the same way because I do not know them. I would not kiss a stranger the way I kiss my wife. I would not speak the same way to a stranger as I would to my own mother. In its broadest stroke, this slogan entirely missed the point it was trying to make. Furthermore, the burden of proof falls on the users of this slogan to reasonably demonstrate that I hate this supposed group. This is where, I propose, that my refusal to accept and endorse their persuasion and lifestyle would be brought to the fore as reasonable evidence that I hate them.

 

But rejecting certain beliefs and practices that someone holds dear is not a determiner of whether you hate them. Many people reject Jesus Christ as Savior, though I know that He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no person will come to God apart from Him. But I don’t hate them for it; rather, I demonstrate my love for people by sharing the gospel message, as my Lord Jesus commands His followers to do. I didn’t agree with one of my closest friends (an unsaved man) who enjoyed strip clubs while I thought the idea was vulgar. I rejected what he saw as a harmless pastime for reasons clearly defined in Scripture, which treats marriage and the covenant of sex given to men and women as sacred. He disagreed, on principle and in practice, and neither of us would move from our position. But I still loved him. He was my friend, and remains my friend. The unspoken assertion that I (or any Christian) must accept and endorse sin to show love for the sinner is itself a self-defeating thought. The reason “love the sinner, hate the sin” is a saying is that Jesus revealed quite clearly that sin separates man from his Creator, and man must be separated from his sin before reconciliation may occur. Believing the gospel and receiving eternal life in Jesus’ name is a confession that we accept God’s view of sin for what it is: odious, evil and destructive. It’s end will be our eternal ruin, and it is something not meant to be lauded or shared so others may suffer a like fate; it is to be called out for what it is and have its nature exposed so people may escape from the deception sin creates in our thinking.

 

The ideological battlefield here is a spiritual one, and it is the war between Heaven and earth, between what is right, and what feels good. When we surrender what is objectively right and succumb to simply indulging in what feels good, we are actually making an excellent case in point of the validity and relevance of biblical morality and what its erasure does to the human soul when rejected.

 

And here we turn from human love to God’s love for man. God so loved the world, Jesus tells us, that He gave Christ to die for our sins, so we would not have to suffer eternal fire, but could return to Him, holy and innocent, Jesus having paid the penalty our sin deserves. God showed us His love that while we were (and are) His enemies, He sent Christ to die for us. He won’t believe for us. Neither will He coerce us. When Jesus was confronted by the mob who cast the woman caught in the act of adultery to Him, first He reminded the mob of their own sin, and forgave the woman hers, telling her further to “go and sin no more, “ John 8:11. He demonstrated love and compassion without compromising truth. Why? Because it would have been disingenuous and cruel to confirm the woman in her sin after offering her forgiveness. She wasn’t forgiven so she could simply double down in her preferred lifestyle with Jesus’ blessing. Our Lord was saying that now she knew beyond any doubt what sin was, and what it was about to cost her, to turn away from it and live her life for a different purpose, namely for Him since this woman did refer to Him as Lord, implying her belief that He was Messiah. Do we deem this episode as an act of love, or hate?

 

He spoke clearly, objectively, and universally as to what was commanded from man to be reconciled to Him. Likewise, He explained the nature of sin and warned us of its dreadful and eternal consequence, as anyone genuinely practicing love would do. If I remained silent about sexual deviance, or worse, endorsed it actively, I am not walking in love because I understand what the consequence of practicing such things is. Why would I knowingly confirm someone in his or her error and simply watch from the sideline? Love acts, even when the action is unwanted and unwelcome. Parents experience this a lot from children, who do not want their proud independence quelled by parental intervention. But such intervention can prevent much hardship, or even save their life. It is an apathetic and lazy response to tell someone, “as long as you’re happy, I’m happy.” Many people doing wrong things are nonetheless happy while doing them. Happiness is not a determiner of whether something is right.

 

When I was much younger I sometimes would break things in a fit of juvenile rage, and it gave me great (although fleeting) pleasure. I was happy when my anger gave such tangible results. Did that make it right? Of course not, you can’t judge objective truth based on how happy it makes you. And when we abandon moral truth that applies to all people for all time and replace it with relativity, all that is left is subjective opinion enforced by the popular will. What is right no longer becomes relevant, only what is convenient in the culture’s current trend. If objectivity on a universal metanarrative has been jettisoned, then blanket statements such as the one were considering are illogical and meaningless. Why? Because morality and ethics are subject to every individual to determine for themselves. Every person will define love differently, and how love should be portrayed. Furthermore the case must be made to agree upon a universal that can define the terms “love” and “hate” satisfactorily for every invested party; otherwise we all end up speaking nonsense to one another.

 

Jesus does indeed love everyone in the LGBTQ community, and calls them out to forsake their sin and believe in Him for eternal life. Paul said of the Corinthian church that certain members were, until they became believers, practicing homosexuals. But they were cleansed and justified. When they became believers they left behind worldly thinking, which had no universal, moral absolute to define what was right, and submitted to the King, who as our Creator defined for all time and all people what right and wrong is, and what the consequences were for practicing either. As my Lord does, so do I wish to, and love with His kind of love. An acceptance that does not condone what is wrong, but reveals sin in Scripture’s light and appeals to the one caught in it to come out from it and be saved. Here, in Christ, we find our true identity and purpose. One’s sexuality (whatever that is actually supposed to mean) cannot define that, or us. We are complex and spiritual beings, and to limit our nature to how one identifies is a fatal and sorrowful error that won’t lead to liberty, but rather the erasure of the genuine characteristics God endowed us with, and define us as unique people. I pray the Lord this article may perhaps help someone understand, even a little. God bless.