Should one hate one's enemies?

The ancient world was a harsh, brutal place. Life, as the old saw has it, was nasty, brutish and short. The mighty empires we read about engaged in many brutal acts. The Romans, who considered themselves the epitome of high civilization, were a bloodthirsty lot. For recreation they watched men hack each other to death, or fight wild predators.

In war they were worse. Cities were sacked, rape, plunder and murder were rampant in such times (although sometimes a sack of a city involved negotiating a price with the city's officials in order not to let the legionnaires loose within). Prisoners, military and civilian alike, were often pressed into slavery. In extreme cases cities were burned or razed to the ground (see the city of Palmyra and emperor Aurelian).

Things like this were common all over the world at the time. The peoples and nations not engaged in such actions were those who could not muster the military strength to undertake them.

But there was remarkably little hate involved.

To be sure the Greeks hated the Persians. This fueled the rise of Alexander, who promised to conquer Persia. And Hannibal hated Rome, which led to his long invasion of Italy, which ultimately failed. Rome, in turn, hated and feared Carthage. Which is why Rome found a way to destroy it after it had ceased being a threat to its dominion.

Overall war and conquest was about one thing: wealth.

Many wars were resolved by one side offering to pay off the other. Rome, BTW, gave as well as it got. Against strong enemies like Parthia or its successor empires, too often Rome wound up paying tribute in order to end a war or to prevent one.

Once conquered, those who escaped death or slavery were, eventually, incorporated into the conqueror's nation. There were exceptions to this, but fewer as time went on. Conquerors usually treated the conquered the same as its own long-time citizens, imposing the same taxation schemes, offering many of the same opportunities, imposing the same obligations. It was not unusual for a conquered region to wind up making one of their own king or emperor, either.

There were few social, political, religious or ideological impositions. Religions continued as before. The ancients, for all their brutality, were remarkably tolerant in this respect. To be sure Rome demanded obeisance to the cult of the Caesars. But this was more political than religious. Jews, who were forbidden by their faith from worshipping other gods, were allowed to offer sacrifices or even prayers to their own god, Jehovah, in the name of a dead emperor. as long as they displayed loyalty to Rome, all was well.

Overall the conquered improved their positions, too. Having more access to trade within the conqueror's territories, and gaining bargaining strength with other nations and empires. In some cases they gained civilization, or aspects thereof. It was the Persians and Greeks who introduced currency to Egypt, for instance.

One thing neither Rome, Athens, Macedon, Carthage, Persia, Parthia, Egypt, Sumer, and the rest ever claimed was to love the people they fought and conquered, or to love their enemies.

don't answer the poll just yet. I have a counterpoint to make first.

Christianity often claims love as a fundamental principle of the faith.

This is a very peculiar kind of love. It has nothing to do with life on this world, nor with any expression of kindness, support, sympathy or respect. It's all about "salvation" and concerns the soul rather than a person and their life.

Rome adopted Christianity as a state religion around the 4th century CE in the reign of Constantine I. In fairness to him, Constantine fist issued an edict declaring official toleration of all religions. But while Christianity thereon thrived in the very extensive Roman Empire and among nations it had influence over, toleration did not follow.

Paganism was wiped out, completely out. At first through inducements, like job offers and money, but later through naked aggression and force (a pattern that would recur when one branch of Christianity deemed another to be heretic).

Judaism remained, but since the time of Theodosius I, under the influence of Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan, Jews were treated thereafter as second class citizens at best. Persecutions, mistreatment and expulsions were common, too. They were restricted as to what fields they could labor in, where they could own land (where they could own land at all), and even where they could live. The emperor Justinian even forced them to use the Septuagint in Greek rather than the Old Testament in Hebrew.

In time these sentiments gave rise to things like the Crusades, the Inquisition, various expulsions of Jews and Muslims (and other Christians, those considered heretics) from various lands, and ultimately the Holocaust. Yes, the latter was a Nazi policy, but the majority of the slaughter was carried out by Catholic Poles and various Christian Orthodox who volunteered to do so.

Why?

The Holocaust aside, which was not a religious policy, I've no doubt the Christians limited, mistreated, persecuted, killed and expelled Jews and others because they loved them.

Christianity also holds belief to be more valuable than actions or works. Even though it places a great burden one one's actions.

But this means it doesn't matter whether a person is good or not. If they don't hurt others, if they don't steal, if they don't lie, if they don't cheat, if they don't steal. If they are good citizens, if they are good parents, if they provide for their children, if they help their friends, if they create any kind of value. Because if their beliefs are wrong, they will go to Hell. And the Christian who "loves" them has to keep them from it, which means he has to persuade them or force them into the right belief. Hence limiting opportunities, persecutions, etc. are all justified by love.

Actions do matter in Christianity only when such actions go against the right belief.

So a good person by most standards cannot be tolerated, because she is transgender and has undertaken to transition, and that apparently is not allowed. Likewise if a person were gay, in love, and married to the person she or he loves.

No, these people must repress their selves and personalities and deep needs for expression and love, and/or ask Jesus to "heal" them of these "sinful" desires. Otherwise they may go on to live happy, satisfying and fulfilling lives. But Christian love is not about life, or about any one particular person's merits. Only about belief.

Acceptance? Tolerance? Support? Kindness?

Not in Christian love.

Should I hate my enemies?

Damn right I should.

It's a lot kinder to let them know so, and the reasons why, than claiming some twisted version of "love" to use against them.

Quote: Nareed

But Christian love is not about life, or about any one particular person's merits. Only about belief.
Acceptance? Tolerance? Support? Kindness?
Not in Christian love.
.

Only if you play ball. I have a friend who
was a bigwig in his church, pew in the
front row, was on the board, gave 10%
of his huge salary every month. Then
he got a divorce. You'd think he'd smeared
himself with dog crap. Not only was he
kicked off the board, he was taken off the
church membership list. He still went to
services, but nobody would speak to him,
not even people he had been friends with
for 20 years. He was so devastated he moved
to another state and started a new life.

That's Christian love in action.

Thank you Nareed for your very thoughtful and moving post. Never before have I seen you better express the reasoning behind your hatred of Christianity. Allow me if you will to respond. I will focus on the role of love in Christianity because I think that is your biggest misunderstanding. The comments about the Crusades, the Inquisition, and especially the Holocaust are way off base but I think a proper understanding of the Christian conception of love may be the root cause.

Love is about much more than salvation for Christianity. Love is the inbreaking of the Kingdom of God here and now, a foretaste of Heaven if you will. God is love, so when we love and experience love we are encountering the presence of God. Jesus makes clear throughout the Gospels that God pours out this love like the dewfall, the rain, or like sunshine - on all human beings. You are wrong about the idea, at least for Catholics, that beliefs are more valuable than works. For us faith and works go together, you can't have one without the other. This is fairly common sense, I can't love you and then treat you like I hate you at the same time. This means then that your good actions apart from a belief in Jesus can be salvific. There are many reasons for why people do not believe in Jesus. None of these reasons I think are valid or stand up to scrutiny, but none the less people often have very strong personal reasons or intellectual ideas for rejecting Christianity. Sometimes it is as simple as they never heard the Gospel or grew up without the possibility of knowing about Jesus. God is not thwarted just because someone has not come to a belief in His Son whose sacrifice on the cross was for everyone. God wills all to be saved and is not limited in His mercy and love.

Therefore a proper understanding of love your enemies and the love of Jesus Christ is not intolerance but rather freedom. I'm not arguing that Christians always have lived this out, in fact Vatican II was a watershed moment in recognizing where the love of God truly led us to, namely Religious Freedom (including the freedom to not believe in God). Before this was made clear I do believe that some Christians were indeed motivated by a poor understanding of God's love to persecution and radical missionary work as if somehow they loved their neighbor and the foreigner more than God did?!? There was a strange idea, never universally present in Catholicism, that if I didn't convince this person to accept Jesus then no matter what they did or how they lived their life they would be doomed to hell. If any Christian would take a moment to think about this idea they would realize they were somehow claiming to be more compassionate, fair, and just than God Himself. No, God does the saving and we trust all people into His loving hands.

So all this is to say that love properly understood in the Catholic Christian thought is one that is motivated not solely by salvation for others, but as Pope Francis makes clear, we are motivated by the Joy of the Gospel. We have Good News (Gospel) and we have a message that brings hope to the despairing, faith to the doubtful, and love to those who feel unloved by themselves or the world. This is about acceptance, tolerance, support, and kindness. It is saying I love you as a child of God and want only for you to be full of joy and I believe the secret to joy and happiness in this life and the life to come is Jesus Christ. He has the answers you seek and He loves you, much more than I ever could.

Should I hate my enemies?

Of course not! They are like myself trying to live happy, satisfying, and fulfilling lives. They are seeking acceptance, support, kindness, and ultimately love just like I am. Ultimately, I believe they will find it not in anything this world can give them, but only in the person of Jesus Christ. I can point to that and witness to it, but Jesus is not dependent on me - in fact sometimes I get in the way. The "twisted" version of love you attribute to Christians is proof that we are sometimes our worst own enemies.

Quote: FrGamble

Ultimately, I believe they will find it not in anything this world can give them, but only in the person of Jesus Christ. .

Good thing that's your opinion and
not a fact. You found it there, why
do you sentence everybody else to
the same fate. If I'm an architect and
find joy in designing and building
homes, what kind of person would I
be if I proclaimed that was the only
way to find happiness. What would
that make me.

There was a part of your long post that rung with such familiarity, I could only think "Yes." Nothing further needed be said or added, just "Yes."

Quote: Nareed

Christianity also holds belief to be more valuable than actions or works. Even though it places a great burden one one's actions.

But this means it doesn't matter whether a person is good or not. If they don't hurt others, if they don't steal, if they don't lie, if they don't cheat, if they don't steal. If they are good citizens, if they are good parents, if they provide for their children, if they help their friends, if they create any kind of value. Because if their beliefs are wrong, they will go to Hell. And the Christian who "loves" them has to keep them from it, which means he has to persuade them or force them into the right belief. Hence limiting opportunities, persecutions, etc. are all justified by love.

Actions do matter in Christianity only when such actions go against the right belief.

So a good person by most standards cannot be tolerated, because she is transgender and has undertaken to transition, and that apparently is not allowed. Likewise if a person were gay, in love, and married to the person she or he loves.

No, these people must repress their selves and personalities and deep needs for expression and love, and/or ask Jesus to "heal" them of these "sinful" desires. Otherwise they may go on to live happy, satisfying and fulfilling lives. But Christian love is not about life, or about any one particular person's merits. Only about belief.

Acceptance? Tolerance? Support? Kindness?

Not in Christian love.

But I don't really want to go the religious debate route. Too tired.

Instead, I'll remind you of a common idea, pretty much summed up by Babs' sig so I'll quote it. "Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die". There are probably a hundred different iterations of this idea, and I do believe it to be the kind of truth that cannot be challenged.

I've struggled with anger / hate / rage, on and off, for most of my adult life. Not a single one of the problems I was mad at got resolved by my anger. Not a single person I directed my rage toward suffered any for my effort. All it did was kill me, little by little, day by day. A missed opportunity here, a broken relationship there, a skeletal injury over there.

That's not to say you have to be a pacifist. I rather enjoy anger. I like the energy; moreso, I like the power it gives by using that energy. But using it, and especially using it for good, is what has made anger a positive in my life. Sometimes it's something so stupid, like my lawnmower breaking. When it breaks, I can't be bothered. When it's broke, and the grass turns to hay, then I get mad. That anger gets me off my ass, makes me look at that mower, and say "No you f#$%ing don't. You're going to WORK today!"... and then it gets fixed. OK, the lawnmower was a stupid example, but the same holds for everything in my life. Whether something as stupid as a broken appliance or something as ultimately serious like my kid and custody, anger is my driving force. It is used, and only good lies in its wake.

Misdirected anger, or worse, anger left to decompose into hate, is a terrible thing. It's a lot like a battery. With energy, there is potential. Leave it sit and it'll eventually eat away its container and ruin everything it touches.

Religion pisses me off, too. While I won't say I've been affected as often or as deeply as you, I've certainly been judged. I've been lifted off my feet by the collar at the ripe old age of 8, by a man of god, simple because I said "God" as an enhancer in exasperation. Like, "God, that's dumb!" I "took the Lord's name in vain", and this prick caught me alone and assaulted me as punishment. I used to have nightmares of my entire family burning in Hell and being tortured by the devil because this idiot's daughters told me we would be, all because I got dressed up for Halloween. I've received shitty comments, behind my back and under my breath though loud enough to ensure I heard it, from some little tart for smoking. I was smoking some 25' away from the walking path precisely to not disturb others, but this tart had the nerve to stage up right next to me (it was a large field, mind you) and then get her panties in a bunch about it. So she made her comment, then turned to her kid and started singing hymns.

Yeah. At least to these folks, beliefs trump all. Actions mean nothing, or worse, they think theirs are good because they believe they are "righteous". And after all (what really bugs me), whatever wrong they do is wiped clean in a little booth after saying a few words. Meanwhile, the offended are left to fix themselves best they can.

So I get it. I do. But what good would hating them do? I get mad, sure. But I use that energy to do a little preaching of my own. Maybe I have discussion with you all here. Maybe it's with friends on Facebook. Maybe it's just teaching my kid right from wrong for his own sake. That little tart is likely going to have a hard life acting the way she does, and I need spend no energy to ensure it will happen. That assaulting asshole is likely old enough to be close to death by now, and after all the time and money he spent on ritual, he will find nothing but darkness waiting for him. And here I am, just being, owning the greatest treasure that no man or god could give me - happiness with who I am as a person.

The best revenge is a life well lived. Never forget it.

Quote: Face

Yeah. At least to these folks, beliefs trump all. Actions mean nothing, or worse, they think theirs are good because they believe they are "righteous". And after all (what really bugs me), whatever wrong they do is wiped clean in a little booth after saying a few words.
.

Or they think time forgives everything. Just the
other day I was watching a docu about the Mayans.
They died out about 800 AD, but they had preserved
their history along the way in carefully drafted
history books written in hieroglyphs. There were
hundreds of them when the Spanish discovered
Guatemala. Cortez thought them important
and sent 4 of them back to the king of Spain.

Then came the Catholic priests. They immediately
deemed the books works of the devil and every
one of them they found was burned. In their
vanity and hubris and holy stupidity, they
burned the written history of one of the most
advanced ancient cultures we have.

When I saw this, I exploded. I scared the dog. The
swear words that came out of my mouth amazed
even me. It was a week ago and I'm still livid
about it. The wrongs and the hurt that's been
done all so ego driven 'religious' men can
always be right, even about things they know
nothing about. It makes me want to smash
them all in the face.

Quote: Evenbob

If I'm an architect and
find joy in designing and building
homes, what kind of person would I
be if I proclaimed that was the only
way to find happiness. What would
that make me.

It would make you pretty silly because we are not talking about an occupation or a hobby of some kind, but rather a philosophy of life. If you found a true belief that gave meaning and purpose to life; filled you with joy and helped you become a better person - what kind of person would you be if you didn't proclaim it to others?

Face, great post as usual. I think I remember us having a discussion a while back about the difference between justice and hatred and your comments reminded me of that. Anger can be a powerful tool to right injustice or to motivate us to do what is right. It can also be poison if we do nothing and helplessly let it settle and corrode our hearts.

I also was moved by the poor examples of Christians you have had in your life. It reiterates the point that we (Christians) are often our own worst enemies. There has to be a way to motivate others to not take the Lord's name in vain or smoke without resorting to jacking up a kid, scaring them, or the passive aggressive whisper behind someone's back. The answer I think is in the true Christian notion of Love. To not make someone feel bad, but rather make them feel great. We are always better motivated I think to live up to a higher calling through a reminder of our inner goodness. If you are convinced you are awesome you will live that way, naturally without force. All that is required is patience, love, and forgiveness. That is what that little booth is about by the way. It is about the sinner not just being forgiven but recovering the idea that he or she is better than their sins and that they need to go out of here and live lives that show that. I'm sure you pull your son aside and do this all the time when you not only teach him right from wrong but forgive and encourage him at the same time.

Quote: Face

Instead, I'll remind you of a common idea, pretty much summed up by Babs' sig so I'll quote it. "Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die".

I could say something about misplaced optimism, but I won't.

Quote:

I've struggled with anger / hate / rage, on and off, for most of my adult life.

I know hatred can be seen as intense, sustained anger. And much of it is. But it doesn't have to be. One can be practical instead. Anger merely clouds the mind and makes you feel miserable. Anger, too, is many times a reflex action. There's no need to ask "should I get angry at my enemies?" because 1) of course and 2) it's not profitable, or even useful, to try to control reflexes most times. I just don't dwell on it.

So, practical in this case means working towards eliminating any influence one's enemies may have. Undermining them and their ideas at all times and by any means. Calmly, reasonably, rationally, deliberately and effectively. Not emotionally, and certainly not angrily.

If you want to speak about anger, the best way to defuse it is to let it out. Not against someone, but not to hold it in. It does absolutely no practical difference to swear at the traffic, for example, it won't make it go one micrometer per year faster at all, but it makes me feel better when I do. Then i can play a podcast or audiobook, or even think about a story or a recipe, and endure the insane traffic from then on. If I don't vent, I keep growing more furious and obsessive about every millimeter the evidently moronic idiot in front of me could have moved in the past five minutes.

Quote:

Religion pisses me off, too.

I knew you were sensible.

Quote:

I used to have nightmares of my entire family burning in Hell and being tortured by the devil because this idiot's daughters told me we would be, all because I got dressed up for Halloween.

That's why I keep telling the Good Father to stop trying to convert the good atheists and instead preach to his brethren.

Quote:

So I get it. I do. But what good would hating them do?

I thing I explained this above. But think, would you not enjoy a world where they have as much influence on society as tin-foil hat conspiracy nuts?

In my fiction, when I have an active enemy they are always religious. Every one of them. Not necessarily Christian, but rather Christian-like most times. In science fiction it pays to "invent" your own religion. The reader expects it. Quick aside, in Clarke's original "Rama" novel, he comes up with something like the Church of Christ Cosmonaut, which has the belief Jesus was an alien.