A Time for Hate

The biblical writer Qohelet famously said, “To everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven” (Ecc. 3:1) and he included in his list, “a time for love and a time for hate” (v.8).

We hear a lot about “a time for love,” about the need for love and the centrality of love for the pursuit of justice—but what about “a time for hate”?

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Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” Far be it from me to challenge the great MLK, but I wonder if we’ve wrongly suppressed experiences or feelings of hate. I wonder if there is a spiritual usefulness to hate.

We often talk as if love and hate are essences we can draw from or feed, as if love is an energy we empower through loving action; and likewise, we treat hate as a spiritual power we can lend weight to in our words and behavior. When we love, we make the power of love stronger, and when we hate, we make hate stronger in general. But what if we thought about love and hate differently? What if we can have experiences of hate that don’t automatically contribute to hateful power?

In the United States, we are entering a time for hate. It is a time when hateful figures and organizations are gaining the upper hand. As a consequence, it is a time when our circumstances are going to grow increasingly hateful. The coming administration will be one to hate, the coming laws, laws to hate.

On the one hand, this supremacy of hatefulness might suggest we need to double down on the power of love. And I generally agree. In order to get through this time, we will need to strengthen the bonds of love we have in our lives, and huddle close to those people who remind us what the pursuit of a loving world looks like. But even as we double down on love, I think we can be too dismissive of feelings of hate.

“I, the LORD, love justice,” Isaiah 61:8 says, “I hate robbery and wrongdoing.” We are entering a time of robbery and wrongdoing, when the richest of the world will be given more inordinate power to exploit the earth and extract evermore wealth on the backs of the poor. Of course we must respond with love for the outcast, the disenfranchised and marginalized, but we will also inevitably know a lot of hate. I contend, some of this hate is useful and necessary.

I hate Donald Trump. I do not love Donald Trump. Nor do I love his appointees, a grab bag of some of the most evil people in existence, who want nothing more than their own selfish gain, and who will destroy the world to get it. My hate for these people, I contend, is not evil, for it is born of a love of justice. “Hate evil,” said the prophet Amos, “and love good; establish justice in the gate” (5:15). I do not believe evil is some abstract essence or spiritual reality that exists apart from human action, I believe evil is enacted by humans, and that the humans who enact evil in the world are hateful and worthy of condemnation and resistance.

My hate focuses me. It is tied to a deep anger that I harbor because things should not be the way they are. That anger is energizing, it reminds me to resist. My hate of the powers that be leads me to hope for, look out for, and seek the downfall of those powers.

I want Donald Trump to fail. I want his plans to be thwarted and his intentions undermined. I will rejoice in his frustration, and will be as formidable of an enemy to him as I can be. For he is my enemy, he is the enemy of the earth, he means us harm, his success means our suffering.

I do not believe I am being dramatic. We have enemies in this world. We, meaning humanity. Humanity has human enemies. The earth has enemies—people who hoard resources, who destroy life, who kill and steal for their own private benefit. These people must be stopped. They must be overcome.

To overcome them, we don’t just need love. We do need love; we need to love the way things should be, we need to love humanity, we need to love the earth, we need to love those who love justice. But we also need to hate the way things are. We need to hate the destroyers. Those who destroy the earth should be destroyed (Rev. 11:18). Destroying them involves hating them. It means seeking to undermine them, to thwart their plans, upset their ventures, and halt their steps. The orientation we need to have toward hateful powers requires hatred. It requires a passionate rejection of their pursuits and a dogged insistence that they will fail.

When Jesus said, “Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you,” he still assumed we have enemies. There are those who persecute and oppress. Maybe the best way to love them is to wrest control of the world from them and make a more loving world in spite of them. For all may benefit from a more loving world, but not all can abide it. “He that gets hurt will be he who has stalled,” wrote Bob Dylan, “For the times they are a-changin’.”

Let us hate for the sake of change, not for the sake of revenge. Organize your hate, rather than let it fester and turn to a self-decaying bitterness. Hate, but hate rightly. Hate without sin.

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