Love to hate?
Jared Wilson reflects on a comment of C.S. Lewis (in Mere Christianity), in which Lewis ponders the difference between hating something someone has done and actually hating that person:-
The real test is this. Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that,” or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally, we shall insist on seeing everything—God and our friends and ourselves included—as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.
We could, comments Wilson, apply this to any of a number of situations:-
- Gossip
- Church conflict
- Relational jealousy
- Sharing of news stories that confirms our suspicions about people on the other end of the political or cultural spectrum
- The language that is used in clickbait links, soundbite videos, mocking memes, and exposé blog posts. We don’t say someone is “critiqued” or their ideas “debunked;” we say they were “destroyed,” “owned,” and so on. We use the language of humiliation or violence.
So I need to ask myself:-
- Is my hatred fed by confirmation bias?
- Do I resist correction the correction don’t fit the story I want to believe?
- Do I love to hate somebody?
- Do I hope for their failure and inwardly delight when it comes?
- Does my desire for justice bleed into desire for vengeance?
- Is any of this commensurate with loving my neighbour?