Posted by Benjamin on: 08.13.2007 /
In the synchroblog thread, there was some discussion of hating people, in which I threw out some thoughts to the effect that I thought it was … “ok” to hate people. Che asked me
I’ve been following all the links associated with this topic, and have enjoyed them a lot.
However, though slightly off topic, how do you explain hating someone?
I admit that my upbringing makes me want to recoil from that, but I have come far enough in life to know that the ‘christianese’ I’ve been taught, is mostly bunk.
So could you explain it more fully, maybe even on another post?
I’d really like to try to understand….
Thanks.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Che’s question, and talking with some friends about it. Following are some of my half formed thoughts.
The amateur philologist in here says “Ok, what exactly are we talking about here anyway?”
OED has for the noun 1.a. An emotion of extreme dislike or aversion; detestation, abhorrence, hatred.
And for the verb 1.a. To hold in very strong dislike; to detest; to bear malice to. The opposite of to love
So there is the emotion. And then there is … perhaps … the action?
I often tell people I grew up in a box. There were a large number rules inside the box, such as … “don’t think, don’t feel, don’t talk”. One of the rules was “Don’t feel anger, and don’t feel hatred.” Another rule was “Don’t talk about really dark, negative, horrifying stuff.”
I guess I grew up not being allowed to *feel* hatred, or acknowledge that I felt it, or talk about it. This disallowance was originally external, and gradually became internal. A few years ago, I reached a point where I was granted permission to feel hatred. This permission was also originally external, and became internal. What I realized was that I always have hated. But being allowed to feel it make it a lot more bearable and useful. I could take it out, and look at it, and decide what to do with it. A terrifying and yet very freeing thing.
I realized a while back that … pain and joy enter throuh the same door. In all my futile attempts, over many years, to shut the door to pain, I was also shutting the door to joy. When I went through the twelve steps, I learned how to open the door to pain, and when I did that, more joy got to come in as well.
It seems to me that hate and love may have a similar relationship. In all my attempts to refuse/disallow/pretend away hatred, I was also shutting the door to love. Can’t have one without the other. This is still a half formed theory, and will no doubt be thoroughly shot out of the water by one of you =)
I remember Data, the android in the Star Trek Next Generation series. As an android, he couldn’t experience emotions. Then some advanced race with advanced technology created an emotion chip for him. When he finally put it in, he was able to experience the full range of human emotions. There was a scene where he had a really strong alcoholic drink at a bar, and when he drank it, he grimaced, looked at the glass, and said, kind of wonderingly “I hate it!”. Then he handed the glass back the bartender and said “Give me another!” Data became a lot more human.
I hate the paintings of Picasso. I didn’t come to hate them fully into I was allowed to feel hatred. I stood for a long time at the Museum of Modern Art in New York a year or so ago, staring at a room full of Picasso’s paintings, overwhelmed with hatred. I couldn’t tear myself away.
It seems that it is useful to distinguish between hate as an emotion and hateful actions. One can feel hatred toward a person, and choose to act toward them in a way that is ultimately loving. One can perhaps even choose to use the powerful energy of the feeling of hatred to fuel creative, devious, cunning, life altering loving actions toward the hated one. It seems to me that those who are victims of horrifying atrocities committed by evil people can gain a certain … power toward/over those hateful, hated perpetrators. To enter into the raging fire of the horror of the crime and the emotions it engenders–the terror, the hatred, the rage–this is an amazingly dangerous and shockingly bold thing to do. It demands seemingly impossible levels of hope–hope that we will live through the fire, hope that the evil will not overwhelm us, hope that perhaps there is a good and a glory even more powerful and more real than that fire. But to experience that good and that glory somehow seems to demand the fire. You can’t be alive to one without the other, it seems to me. And perhaps you cannot harness the power that being a victim gives you, in order to use that power for good, without entering that fire.
Those are some of my thoughts. I’d love to hear your response.
Leave a Reply
Comment by: Helen
1 08/13/07 7:43 AM | Comment Link |Very interesting - thanks Benjamin.
I absolutely agree that trying to pretend you don’t have feelings you do have is never the answer. I’m not surprised that that approach messes everything up - that denying one feeling makes you confused and unable to feel other feelings either.
After I admit “I hate” seems to be accurate, I find it helpful to deconstruct it. What do I hate? Do I hate the person or what they are doing? I can’t think of any instance where I truly hate the totality of a person. But I might very much hate something they are doing, if, say, I believe it is unjust and hurtful.
Benjamin what do you mean by you hate Picasso’s paintings? I find that intriguing and would love for you to elaborate on what you hate about them. Please understand I am not questioning your hatred of them. Rather, I’m curious to know what it is about them that arouses so much negative emotion in you. If you don’t mind me asking :).
Comment by: Rachel
2 08/13/07 10:00 AM | Comment Link |Benjamin, I relate to your description of growing up in a box. I grew up in a similar box, perhaps a bit larger than yours, but definitely a place where certain negative emotions and realities were suppressed or denied. It was a strange box because on the one hand we were taught to put on a happy, victorious Christian face and to claim that we loved everyone. And yet there was a darker side to the belief system.
I’ve been thinking more about this lately after reading the book “Stealing Jesus: How Fundamentalism Betrays Christianity” by Bruce Bawer. I didn’t agree with all of Bawer’s conclusions but this particular passage really resonated with me. In it, Bawer is quoting Charles Strozier’s “Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America.”
Comment by: Benjamin
3 08/13/07 6:08 PM | Comment Link |helen,
thankyou for asking. very briefly for now–I find his paintings disturbing. they seem to be getting in touch with very dark, terrifying emotions and … monsters which reside inside us, or at least inside me. It’s almost as if he reaches into the worst bits of my scariest nightmares, and pulls out … not the *actual* images, like a photograph would, but rather images that portray the emotions and the worst, creeepiest, slimiest, most revolting, most to-be-avoided bits of those nightmares.
But he does it so powerfully, I am drawn to it. I mean it’s a lot safer somehow to examine these things in the daytime, in a well lit gallery, than at nighttime in the dark in one’s bedroom, when all one wants upon awakening from such a nightmare is some comfort.
Comment by: Benjamin
4 08/13/07 6:17 PM | Comment Link |rachel,
love the stozier quotes. yeah. it kind of touches on the fact that it seems more and more likely to me that we are going to have to save ourselves–we human beings. I grew up thinking that god had saved and would save me. but what exactly this salvation entailed was failry nebulous to me. I gradually came to realize that he *hadn’t* saved me–not any kind of salvation that I found even remotely satisfying. I was, in many ways, even more of a really nasty awful person than I had been when I “got saved”. I realized I was gonna have to do a ton of work *myself* if I wanted to be saved from the stuff that I was doing and the ways I was thinking.
Similar ideas about … saving the world, or MTWABP. It used to be all very future. Someday god’s gonna fix it all up. That became less and less satisfying as well. I want stuff fixed up now. This is seemingly impossible, but it seems to me the only way to get where we wanna be is for us to walk that direction, climb that direction, work our butts off going that direction.
It seems to me that *perchance* “christianity” in the rest of the world, outside the united states, is a lot more in touch with the whole “work out your salvation”, and it’s up to *us* to save the world. I was reading a really interesting article a couple years ago about how Christinaity outside the U.S. is largely left leaning, whereas here it is largely right leaning. anyway–just some thoughts.
Comment by: Randy
5 08/13/07 6:57 PM | Comment Link |I wonder if one can be angry without hating? It seems that Jesus was ok with being angry (the whole table turning thing in the temple), and the apostle Paul was ok with being angry (as long as you got things settled and didn’t let it slip into “sin”). The only bible passage I can think of where Jesus addresses hate is how we should respond to those who hate us (our “enemies”): Pray for them.
Is this a trivial issue I’ve raised? Are the two words (anger and hatred) inextricably linked?
Comment by: benjamin ady
6 08/13/07 9:14 PM | Comment Link |randy,
not at all a trivial issue!
I’m a bit of an amateur philogist, so I love throwing out and pondering questions like this.
I am thinking although I hate Picasso’s paintings, I don’t feel anger toward them. I don’t want to destroy them. I am drawn toward them by my hatred. They repulse me, but engender no anger.
On the other hand, I can see what you are talking about in bringing up the link between hatred and anger. They seem to be very similar. Anger seems to be more direclty connected to violence than hatred?
It seems to me that orthodox jews hate Haman. I would be more hard pressed to call their experience toward him one of anger. Perhaps a deep seated, long term, historical, anger?
You raise great questions. thankyou!
Comment by: David H
7 08/13/07 9:37 PM | Comment Link |I get angry with my kids without hating them. I am also much more careful in how I express my anger with my children (or anyone I love/care about) then with someone who a) irritates me or b) is of little meaning to me.
I’m not sure where I stand on this issue, perhaps because I came from a fairly repressive upbringing. But I do find Benjamin’s words on this very compelling. There is quite a bit that rings true. Guess I need to think more on this.
I also have complicated revulsion/attraction relationships with things (though most are not nearly as refined as “Guernica”). My disgusted fascination is with things like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” especially those depicting how poorly adults treat children. My therapist has suggested it is because I am seeking answers. Not sure that has any relevance to this topic.
Comment by: Helen
8 08/14/07 9:50 AM | Comment Link |David, my feelings/emotions are complex too. Maybe everyone’s are.
Comment by: Karen
9 08/15/07 2:55 PM | Comment Link |Rachel:
Bawer has been a very important influence for me, Rachel! I read Stealing Jesus and his other book (also excellent) A Place at the Table, about gay acceptance.
Of course, I could totally, totally relate to what he was saying in Stealing Jesus. In fact, I started reading it after dinner one night and got so caught up in it I stayed up until about 3 in the morning to finish it. I couldn’t put it down!
It felt like someone from my own little “world” had gotten inside my head and laid out all the conflict and confusion I was feeling (and that I was sure no one else from my world ever felt!) and puzzled it all out ahead of me. That was truly amazing.
I think he makes a good point about the conflict between the peaceful, gentle teachings of the church and the flip side, which is hideous violence both in the OT and in hell or the apocalypse. Because you could lay off that negative stuff as “God’s will” or “god knows what he’s doing, we shouldn’t question him” I honestly never thought much about it. Maybe that’s because I was taught not to think too much in the first place!
Comment by: Steve S
10 08/18/07 7:22 AM | Comment Link |We musn’t make the mistake of assuming that the Bible is endorsing what it records… there certainly are ‘problematic’ passages, but I think many people (on both sides of the issue) read the Bible innapropriately when they use a narrative as a prescription. (Slavery is a great case in point!)
I think the “Temple Episode” is a profoundly misunderstood situation. I don’t think we grasp the immensity of what Jesus is really doing there. It is about much more than anger over enterprising vendors.
As to hatred itself. We should never deny what is real (this is a dangerous thing to do for our own mental/spiritual health), yet I believe along the lines of what Helen said. Hatred has a proper place only when we truly love. If we deeply love someone, of course we will hate their destruction (be it through alcohol abuse, or someone elses violence). If we love everyone deeply, we will hate their destruction just as deeply.
This is how I understand the proper place of hatred; don’t ask me however, how I live out what I believe :) I am still trying to figure that one out…
Comment by: Benjamin Ady
11 08/18/07 11:35 AM | Comment Link |Steve,
I’m intrigued by this idea. Are you kind of touching on the idea of finally transcending groups. You know how we do that inside/outside the group thing–and the groups tend to get bigger as we get older–Immediate family, school, work, nation, …. humankind/the world?
We cannot love without hating, I said, and you are saying we only hate when we love. That’s helfpul. I touches on the idea of justice. when we love, we desire justice for those we love, and we hate injustice toward them. and yet also we want *mercy* and forgiveness for those we love, if they have committed injustice against others. How to find the balance between justice and mercy? Is this connected to finding a balance between love and hatred?
Comment by: Steve S
12 08/18/07 1:54 PM | Comment Link |It is how I understand God’s wrath. He cannot stand to see His beautiful children come to harm, nor to see His good creation treated with such calous disregard.
I think the message of the Cross is that mercy is triumphant. A person I listen to off and on repeats often, “Love wins!”
I understand justice simply to mean: making things right. If that is the case then there are many paths that lead to justice. …only one path is the path Jesus’ walks.
Justice as retribution (eye for eye) is IMO irreconcilable with love and/or mercy, justice as redemption flows out of love/mercy.
I am reminded of the scene from Ghandi where he is confronted by a Hindu man who killed a Muslim child in retaliation for his own childs murder. Ghandi tells him that his way out is to find a Muslim orphan and raise him as his own, and to raise him as a Muslim.
Jesus crucifed is redemptive justice. Taking the troubles of the world upon His own shoulders in order to bring justice to it. To mercifully offer a path to restoration instead of a swift punishment for wrongs done.
Comment by: Rachel
13 08/19/07 4:18 PM | Comment Link |Excellent point, Steve! It’s important that we recognize that some Bible passages are descriptive and some are prescriptive.