Love, Hatred, and the Christian Life

I am very conservative, but have never entirely fit in with the conservative crowd.

This is partly because I am a Vogan. We are lone wolves by nature, preferring to take our chances with Nature rather than go along with the pack. It is a long, time-honored, and contentedly resentful tradition.

If I had any doubts of this, they were confirmed when my daughter ran into a clan of Vogans from Texas. They were just as conservative (gun-totin’ red-blooded PCA church members) and just about as schismatic as we are. Perhaps more on the gracious side and less on the resentful, but the family resemblance was unmistakable. There was a reason my Great-Uncle Frank when he put together his family memoirs included a postscript aimed at exhorting us not to be so quick to take offense at each other, and to get better at forgiveness.

At any rate, it has occurred to me that apart from the detriments (of which there are plenty) there are also some benefits to not fitting into the mold. One of the more significant ones is portrayed by Lieutenant Gatewood in the movie Geronimo. There is a particular scene where he and Al Sieber, the hard-bitten desert scout who is guiding their details, have a disagreement about how to proceed in their search for the Apache leader. Sieber thinks they should leave behind some of their native scouts, while Gatewood demurs and says the debacle at Cibecue would never have happened if he had been there.

Sieber: “I know you don’t like me much, and I don’t really care. I’m rough in some of my ways and I’m not the gentleman type. But I do think, compared to you, I’m somewhat honest. No offense intended, Lieutenant, speaking off the record.”

Gatewood nods.

Sieber continues: “I just figure you’re a real sad case. You don’t love who you’re fighting for, and you don’t hate who you’re fighting against.”

Gatewood looks at him, somber: “Perhaps I could learn to hate with the proper vigor from you, Al.”

“Well, maybe you could, Lieutenant.” Sieber turns and walks away.

I have thought about this exchange many times. Sieber criticized Gatewood because the Lieutenant insisted on treating the Apaches like human beings, instead of like the faceless, nameless, soulless attackers that could so easily be conceived in Al Sieber’s world of black-and-white. It was not that Gatewood lacked courage or failed to realize the threat that was posed by their opponents, as was demonstrated in the faceoff between him and the young Apache chief that ended in the chief’s death at Gatewood’s hands. But rather it was that even in the soldiers’ victory, Gatewood refused ever to relegate the Apaches to a status of inhumanity. He always treated them with respect and afforded them dignity.

The position was ultimately a costly one for Gatewood to take. In the end of the movie (spoiler alert!) he correctly perceives that the immoral, corrupt General Miles has no intention of keeping his word to the Apaches, and as a reward for his perception he is relegated to a life of obscurity in the desert and will never be allowed to move up in the ranks. I can identify with this. Both in conservative and liberal circles I have observed firsthand the reality that if you support leadership’s narrative you will be treated well, and if you speak up against their wrongdoing you will be treated badly. I have seen it happen over, and over, and over again.

Nobody likes to be treated badly. Not soldiers, not scouts, not Apache chiefs, not generals. When it happens to us it is very easy to slip into hatred. But it is important to retain the clarity that Lieutenant Gatewood demonstrates in the movie: The all-important realization that if you are treated badly for refusing to hate someone unjustly, and that if you then turn around and hate the person who did it to you, you are only perpetuating the cycle.

So what do we do? Just go with the flow and keep our mouths shut when we see injustice being done to another human being? Align our hatred with the powers that be and will reward our obedience, as Al Sieber did? Not according to the Bible:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.’” Matthew 5:43-44

Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount is laying down a new Law. It is not like the old one, in which an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth leaves the whole world blind and toothless. It is a calling to realize that hatred and love themselves are endless. The hatred of Hell that sets itself against even the very existence of God has locked the door from the inside, and its worm will never be quenched. The love of Heaven has realized that humanity is too weak a vessel to set itself upon, and it builds its eternal foundation on the person and work of Christ Jesus Himself. To love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind must always be the first and greatest commandment, and if by grace we are raised from sin to be able to do this, we will then be unable not to love each other.

This does not mean there is no hatred for the Christian. We are to hate sin (most of all in ourself!), to hate the devil, and to hate Death. But we do not confuse those three great spiritual enemies with the people with immortal souls with whom God has called us to interact here in this world. And sometimes the consequences for people’s decisions can be very hard. When the Apaches revolt against the soldiers at Cibecue, much blood will be spilled, for the government does not bear a sword for no reason. But to hate the person is not allowed to us, because God did not hate us. He showed His love for us in this: That while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

My prayer, then, is for temperance, that most ancient and neglected of virtues. It is to hate sin with a hatred that will crucify it wherever I find it in my own soul, and have the courage to help my brothers and sisters do the same thing in their own walk. It is to hate the devil with a Gospel perspective that calls on the power of God Almighty to rebuke him wherever he is going about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. It is to hate Death with a great and passionate hatred that longs for that great Day when eternal life will break over me like the dawn in the desert; for that Day when Death, that last great enemy, will be destroyed. May the Lord so order my loves that I may hate with the proper vigor, and so glorify Him when He comes again to make all things new.

Photo credit: Geronimo, 1993