Mystic Way of the Heart

Part 3: Applied Ethics

In the Present Day

There are a number of common situations in which some of us modern Christians fall back on an attitude of “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”   I’ve heard it used with reference to vices of all sorts, to addictions, acts of violence, and even to identifying as other than Christian.   In terms of public discourse, perhaps the most noteworthy context these days is that of romantic love between persons of the same sex or gender, which we shall refer to under the shorthand term of gay love.*

There are various reasons we’re taking the issue of gay love as the case in point:

First, it is an issue where judgment of sin is clearly a common practice among Christians.  A recent survey says that 71% of weekly church-going Americans, and 82% of “evangelical, fundamentalist or born again Christians,” consider gay love to be sinful, as compared to 44% of all Americans.

Second, as with many other issues, traditional doctrines based on certain scriptures are typically used to try justifying the judgment of sin.**

Third, this issue can be quite a flashpoint. The attitude of many Christians is the most passionate example of hate in “hate the sin,” while the love in “love the sinner” is too often at best merely pity and squeamish or begrudging tolerance. Furthermore, the message of hate can so far outweigh the message of love that some of us seem to think it is our duty to God to be hostile on this issue.  The words that come from the mouths of this hateful Christian “love” encourage intentional emotional abuse, and too often even explicitly advocate physical violence.  Is any of that what Jesus taught?

This issue clearly shows that the ethic of separating out the sin to be hated while loving the sinner eventually falls in upon itself.  The faulty cornerstone of our presumption to judge sin for others makes the entire edifice unsafe to inhabit.   As Jesus taught, and the Apostles rediscovered for themselves, this is not the way to serve and minister to others, or to build a community of faith, hope, peace, and love.

In the Early Church

When it came to the matter of other people’s sins, Jesus’ love repeatedly reached across the traditional barriers of his time.  Even so, in the early times after Jesus we find the Apostles deeply troubled in working out how to love as Jesus loved.  They were concerned about who was and was not worthy of Christian love, and how that love should or should not be expressed.  There was friction among them about whether or not a Gentile could be considered a sibling in Christ, and this friction was based upon the purity codes in scripture and Jewish tradition.  Devout Jews of the time regarded it sinful merely to associate with “impure” people, let alone treat them as equals in the sight of God.  To do so was to invite both social and legal consequences, and was even considered an invitation for God’s wrath.   To me, that sounds a lot like where many of us Christians are today on the issue of gay love.

Despite their fear, the Apostles finally let go of this sweeping judgment against their Gentile neighbors.  One of the most significant moments in this transformation occurs when Peter received two visions that led him to say:

God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.  Acts 10:28

Notice that he didn’t say, “God told me to welcome you despite your impurity,” which would be more like “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”   Rather, he accepted the mystical experience of his dreams and visions, the Holy Spirit moving within him, and dropped his old scripturally-backed judgment.  He was then able to more freely love the soul kneeling before him, asking the man to rise and be greeted as an equal.   In doing so, he mirrored the attitudes and behaviors of the one he called Lord.  He let go of the judgment of sin, and loved the soul.

This practice of letting go of judgment, particularly with regard to the purity codes, grew rapidly among early Christians.  It accompanied a significant evolution in the understanding of sin.  With time, many prohibitions for the ancient people of Israel were no longer even regarded as matters of sin, and that progression has not stopped.  We have also increasingly realized that such purity codes actually serve more as obstacles than aids to spreading the Good News and uniting all people as one family in God’s unconditional love.  As this progression rolls on,”hate the sin, but love the sinner” should become less and less relevant to Christian life.  We are increasingly letting go of the judgment of sin, and instead focusing on loving the soul.

A Closing Thought

Jesus and his followers exemplified this point many times over: If we want God’s loving will “done on earth as it is in Heaven,” then we best serve that aim with a love that welcomes others as equals, respects their freedom, and promotes peace.   In short, it’s all so simple:  We reap what we sow.   That’s also a pretty good tenet to keep in mind!

Agape

* The term gay love is used here because it acknowledges that people of the same sex or gender can and do love each other in every way.  When looking into our own hearts and minds, many of us who are straight have found that the term “homosexual” has been associated with a tendency to focus only on the sexual desires and behaviors of gay people.  This is dehumanizing and unfair.  How many of us routinely refer to the romantic love between straight people as “heterosexuality” or even “straight love”?  I pray for the day when everyone will wonder why there would be a need to routinely classify romantic love in such ways.

** For now, it would be a distraction to question the traditional understandings of those scriptures, and thus challenge the idea that gay love is sinful.  It is enough to note in passing that Biblical scholars, theologians, clergy, ordinary laypersons, and even entire Christian communities are increasingly doing so, just as was done with interracial love in the previous century.

I’m offering these reflections in three parts.  First, we’ll take a look at the history of this saying.  Second, we’ll evaluate it in the context of the Good News as I understand it, and consider an alternative that I think better serves the spirit of Christ’s call.  Finally, we’ll address one of the ways this saying is frequently applied, how it is problematic, and how the suggested alternative could be beneficial.

Part 1: Some Background

Many contemporary Christians, including me, have spoken this statement, or some variation of it, as if it is traditional doctrine, if not actually scriptural.   In fact, it is neither, although there are scriptural references that might be used to support it, such as these:

Love must be sincere.  Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Romans 12:9

Show mercy to those who doubt. Pull others out of the fire. Save them.  To others, show mercy mixed with fear.  Hate even the clothes that are stained by the sins of those who wear them.  Jude 22-23

So what is the source of this supposed doctrine?  The earliest known approximation of the modern version comes from St. Augustine of Hippo. In a letter counseling quarreling nuns, he said: Cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum. (Opera Omnia, Vol II. Col. 962, #211) This statement actually translates as “with love of persons and hatred of sins.”  Notice that it doesn’t refer to those persons by the term “sinners.”  The contemporary saying is also misattributed to Mohandas Gandhi, who only reflected upon it in his autobiography.  As far as I know, the first English statement of “hate the sin, but love the sinner” appears in Edward Irving’s book, Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses, Volume 1 (1828), pp. 131-132:

“It is a vain thing to say that God loveth sinners and ungodly creatures: he extendeth mercy and grace unto them, and loveth the election for his Son’s sake; but he must cease to love his Son – that is, to love himself – when he loveth those who are rebellious against himself.  He is “angry with the wicked every day:” he cannot look upon the workers of iniquity but with detestation and abhorrence. It is one of the sayings of that wretched Arminianism, with which the land is overflowed, ‘Hate the sin, but love the sinner.’  What mean they? That sin is something by itself, and the sinner something by himself, so distinct from one another, that the one may well be hated, and the other may well be loved?  They know nothing at all, and they will know nothing at all.”

To some extent, I agree that sin and sinner are inseparable, but that is about as far as my agreement with Irving goes.   It seems clear that he is trying to justify hatred toward those we would judge as sinners, and yet even his logic diverts from his own assertion that God extends mercy and grace to sinners.  What are mercy and grace if not expressions of love?  His reasoning also falters in concluding that it is hateful toward oneself to love those who rebel against you.    Does every mother who loves a rebellious child therefore hate herself?  To me, this position is absurd, makes love sound petty, and casts God as terribly small.

The Christian scriptural basis of Irving’s argument is also questionable.  His only scriptural quotation, “angry with the wicked every day,” is from Psalm 7:11, but there are so many things attributed directly to Jesus and his apostles that contradict the way he is using it.  For example, he would have a very hard time reconciling his position with Jesus’ very clear instruction to “love your enemies.”  Furthermore, in Romans 5:6-10, we actually find a powerful refutation of Irving’s argument:

For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.  Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.

Let’s not get mired in a scriptural duel, parrying and thrusting with passages taken out of context.  That would be a distraction from the most important point of this series, which is to suggest a different approach to Christian ethics than “hate the sin, but love the sinner.”  In Part 2, I will therefore deal with this matter in light of what I believe to be the central moral themes of the Good News.