Beyond Love and Hate

• In Defense of Hate
• What is Hate?
• The Reason for Hate

In part 1 of this series, I made the observation that in our society we tend to hold love to be a good thing and hold hate a bad thing, and that this seems to be something that many of us consider obvious or self-evident (the love-not-hate ethic). I claimed that such a view is not at all obvious, and that to hold it as such is reductive, dogmatic, and dangerous. I then argued that one way in which it is reductive is in failing to recognize the significant differences in the way many of us understand terms like “love” and “hate,” and I suggested that one of the ways in which it is dangerous is in preventing us from understanding others and being able to engage with them in productive dialogue. In this post, I focus on the idea that there are significant differences in the ways many of us understand love and hate, and that these differences in perspective produce significant practical consequences for the ways we live and interact with each other.

A basic premise I am working with here is that many of us attribute different meanings or definitions to terms like “love” and “hate.” I don’t think that premise, so far as it goes, is controversial. Indeed, I suspect those of us who have gotten in disagreements of any length over these issues are painfully aware of its truth. What is crucially important to recognize, however, is that this is not the whole story. To put it another way, this is not just the way things are. Rather, things are this way for a reason. As I mentioned briefly in part 1, differences in the way we understand love and hate have much to do with differences in what other beliefs and values we hold about the world. What we believe about human beings, their ultimate value and purpose, and their relation to each other naturally informs what we believe our moral obligation toward other human beings should be. Insofar as we have disparate beliefs about ourselves and our place in the world (and we certainly do), we are likely to have disparate beliefs about how to treat others.

But, what sort of disparities am I talking about, and do they really make all that significant a difference with respect to love and hate?

In order to answer these questions and illustrate why I think these disparities are deeply problematic, I think it best for me to first use an example I witnessed in my own life. I hope that this will better demonstrate how these ideas sometimes play themselves out in our day-to-day interactions with one another, while for now avoiding some of the complications the treatment of a larger scale issue would require.^[1]

Several years ago, I witnessed a rather striking example of love being championed in opposition to hate on the campus of Western Michigan University where I attended classes. Occasionally at the beginning of each school year, conservative (many would say fundamentalist) Christian apologists show up on campus wearing sandwich boards decrying the assumed depravities of secular college life, and they call for the students to repent. On this particular day, I sat and watched as one of these street preachers was standing amid a crowd of students shouting his message to no one in particular. Students would occasionally shout responses, arguing against the preacher’s statements or generally heckling him. After a while, a small group of students showed up and surrounded the preacher, displaying posters that read, “love is louder.” The message was clear. To these students, whatever this preacher was about, it wasn’t love. It was probably hate or bigotry or something else negative, and it needed to be counteracted with a display of love.^[2]

Now, to be fair, I recall that the message of the preacher was harsh by most standards. He had a sandwich board that listed various vices (e.g. drunkenness, fornication, homosexuality), making it explicitly clear that anyone who practiced these things was destined for hell. The preacher was Jesse Morrell, a full-time missionary, whose ministry, Open Air Outreach, takes him to all sorts of places in the United States to share the Christian Gospel (or at least a version of it).[3] I later discovered that the students with the posters were also acting in connection with an organization. It was apparently part of a program called Love is Louder. Here is a statement from their website:

“This movement strives to amplify the momentum of other inspiring online campaigns and invite anyone who has felt mistreated, misunderstood or isolated into the conversation. We are here to raise the volume around a critical message — that love and support is more powerful than the external and internal voices that bring us down, cause us pain and make us feel hopeless.”[4]

I think these are all potentially valuable pursuits, and this program seems to have made a real impact on people dealing with emotional and psychological issues. If combatting pain and negativity is pursued cautiously and with the critical evaluation it requires, I think it can be very valuable indeed. If that were clearly the capacity in which the students were acting in the above situation, then I might view this experience differently. However, whatever the intent or motivation of the students, I am struck by some of the wider implications their actions reveal concerning ethical values and the way they are communicated in public.

First, while the words of the preacher were certainly negative, and while some would probably consider them hateful, I think this characterization is, at best, an oversimplification and, at worst, a gross misunderstanding. Despite his vitriol, the preacher’s ultimate purpose and goal seems to have been to win converts to Christianity. The damning message of the sandwich board was likely intended as a way to grab the attention of those around him and to stress the urgency of what he was sharing. According to the website for Open Air Outreach, his mission is “to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to sinners through open air preaching, calling them to forsake their sins and trust in Christ, and to train up other believers to do likewise.”[5] In the context of his theological beliefs, this means the purpose was to bring people to salvation and eternal life.[6] When we understand that this is the goal, we start to see that the words of the preacher are the farthest thing from hateful and are actually much closer to loving. If he sincerely believed (as he apparently did) that some in the crowd were destined to hell, it would have been far more hateful for him to say nothing. Perhaps it would have been more hateful still for him to condone what he considered sinful and to encourage them to continue on as before. To label his behavior hateful misses the point entirely.

We can of course recognize this important point and still criticize such practices for being too negative, harsh, or simply ineffective. In fact, many of the Christians I have talked to seem embarrassed by such methods of evangelizing. The consensus seems to be that it is not an effective way to win converts and may even be counterproductive because it turns people away from the Christian Church. Be that as it may, it in no way indicates that such methods are hateful, only that they are misled or poorly conceived or executed. The argument could also be made that somehow, deep down, the preacher really did have hateful motives, that he is secretly some kind of sadist who enjoys causing emotional harm. This is possible, but it is also highly speculative, goes against evidence to the contrary, and (barring a psychological evaluation, or possibly even with one) is impossible to adequately demonstrate. I imagine there may also be some who would argue that regardless of his purported internal motivations, his hurtful words or actions are what make this an act of hate. In my view, such an argument only serves as a case-in-point of the importance of addressing the meanings of terms like “love” and “hate” before we can have any productive discussion about them. If our goal is to combat what we consider wrong by convincing others that it is wrong, we need to establish at least some common ground on which to do so. In this case, even if you are convinced that the preacher’s actions match your definition of “hateful,” it does little good to tell him to stop being hateful if he is operating under a different definition of what is “hateful” (which he very well could be). As is the case with “love,” our understanding of “hate” is going to depend on our own beliefs, convictions, and emotions – things other people in our society aren’t necessarily going to share.

So, at least in the situation outlined above, it seems clear to me that the two parties involved, the preacher and the protestors, were operating under disparate understandings of love and hate and that these disparate understandings brought them into conflict. And, what were the consequences of that conflict? What was at stake? Ultimately, the hearts and minds of everyone present. Both parties had as their goal the protection of the public from something believed to be a great threat to its well-being. In this sense, both were concerned with saving people, with converting them to a way of thinking about themselves that was truer, healthier, or more beneficial. In this they were the same. The crucial differences lay in the way each party understood what was truer, healthier, or more beneficial. I have little doubt that both would consider themselves to be acting out of love rather than hate, and yet, because of their underlying beliefs, they ended up opposed to one another in very public argument.

Of course, the situation outlined above is only one example. It is hardly representative of all the different kinds of conflicts we face in our society, and there certainly are situations in which it is much clearer that someone is motivated by negative attitudes toward or beliefs about someone else or a whole group of people. In fact, sometimes this is made quite explicit; some may even embrace the word “hate” to describe their own views. So, what of those cases in which it is clear someone is intentionally being hateful, even by their own standards? Doesn’t this surely cross a line and go against basic standards of human decency? Wouldn’t someone have to be beyond reason to hold such a view?

Yes and no. Yes, this goes against what we might rightly consider basic standards of decency, but no – one need not be beyond reason to go beyond these standards. To the contrary, I would argue that, far from being beyond reason, people who hate almost always choose to do so consciously – even conscientiously – for specific reasons. Furthermore, their reasons for doing so can sometimes be every bit as rational or sophisticated as (if not more so than) the reasons others choose to love. This may appear, to many, to be a bold claim, and I recognize it therefore requires some explanation and defense. In part 3 of this series, I will attempt to provide exactly that.

[1] Too often, I think, we dive in to discussions about complex issues with far reaching (indeed, global) implications without giving adequate consideration to just how complex and far reaching these issues may be. It is precisely this tendency to look for easy answers to difficult problems that I am arguing against here. Rest assured, I do believe the principles I am outlining in this series apply to the global just as well as the local, perhaps even more so, and I hope to explicitly address larger scale issues at a later point.

[2] I imagine one could object that the situation I am describing isn’t a good example of love versus hate since neither party made any explicit mention of “hate,” but I hope it is clear by now that I am concerned not so much with so-called “hate” or “love” as with any way of talking about beliefs and values (whether our own or others’) that works to reduce and distort rather than inform and clarify.

[3] OpenAirOutreach, “Get Jesse Morrell’s Book for FREE!,” YouTube video, 04:04, Posted [March 2016], https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8C3o-cC-QA.

[4] “Love is Louder,” Love is Louder, accessed September 21, 2017, http://www.loveislouder.com/about.html.

[5] “Mission Statement,” Open Air Outreach: Taking the Gospel Where It Belongs, accessed September 21, 2017, http://www.openairoutreach.com/mission.html.

[6] “Statement of Faith,” Open Air Outreach: Taking the Gospel Where It Belongs, accessed September 21, 2017, http://www.openairoutreach.com/statementoffaith.html.