‘I’d rather be known for what I’m for rather than for what I’m against.’
This is a sentiment I expressed to a colleague one day as we were discussing some Christians who always seem to be attacking something or someone. It also seems to me that the world’s mouth (the ‘media’) is constantly looking to criticize Christianity for being against this or that, for, what must seem to them, an unceasing stream of ‘hatred.’ I get that. There are some groups (cough, hack, Westboro, cough) that only ever seem to spew forth vitriol of the most vile sort. So, all in all, I’d wish that people who come across my path knew what things I stood for, what convictions I had that didn’t seem hateful or vengeful for or intolerant (I do not think that word means what you think it means).
And yet…I was reminded last week, as our calendars turned and we found ourselves facing a new year, in an blog post by Doug Wilson, that it’s not a bad thing to be known for what you’re against. Or for what you hate.
The fear of the Lord is hatred of evil. Pride and arrogance and the way of evil and perverted speech I hate. Proverbs 8.13
See, it is a good thing to hate some things. Wilson goes on to list a few things we, who profess Jesus Christ, ought to love and hate:
1. Learn to love properly…the Lord your God and your neighbor. These are, after all, the two command,emts which Jesus says sums up all of God’s commandments, which we are to love (Psalm 119).
2. Learn to hate hypocrisy…especially in myself. There should no where that hypocrisy is more loathsome than in me.
3. Learn to hate jargon, buzzwords, cant, and Kant. Words detached from the objects they are supposed to represent — which is what happens with a denial of the correspondence view of truth — is the first step in getting our duties with regard to true hatred completely muddled. So learn to love objective truth, and hate all subjectivism. Learn to mean what you say, and say what you mean. Target every form of verbal pretension and postmodern word games. What is needed here is precision. So put a scope on your rifle. Sight it in. Go out for target practice in an abandoned garden patch. Get a bead on the pumpkins of postmodernism. Use hollow points. The results will be gratifying. (This one was all Doug…no one says it quite like he does!)
4. Learn to hate every form of egalitarianism, feminism, metrosexuality and associated swisheries, pomosexuality, and androgyny. If you’re not certain just what this means, well, to use the words of Barney Fife, ‘See the man.’
There’s more, but you get the idea, don’t you. So, I want to be against things- evil, sinful ideas and philosophies, wicked people and actions. But I also want to be known for loving the Lord my God with all my heart and soul and mind, loving my neighbor, loving the Word of God, and loving the church of Jesus. This is not a resolution for a new year. It’s a lifelong commitment.
