Addendum to "For funwithrage..."
I realized after a few comments were posted that the discourse I posted earlier this afternoon was in one respect inadequate: it completely failed to address the "hate the sin, not the sinner" issue. Now, we've talked about this one in the past, funwithrage, and though my argument has developed (to the point of being plausible, even,) the conclusion is still true. I was right, but for the wrong reasons. Here's what's up, in brief.
It does seem reasonable to hate each person on account of their flaws, and love them on account of their merits. Indeed, it is. Even in Christianity. Weird, huh?
The difference between Christianity and other ethoi (is this a word?) is one of moral scale. If the goal is just to be a kinda okay guy or gal, maybe even a pretty good one, and to live in a kinda functional society, then yes. It is appropriate to be pretty okay with most people, to love people who are particularly good, and to hate people who go and mess up everyone's kinda functional little groove.
That is not the case in Christianity, because we are shooting much higher. We believe that the world could be (or at least could have been) perfect just as easily as flawed. Creation itself is, according to Christianity, a post-"Cataclysmic" wasteland, to at least some significant degree*. The fact that it still has trees is thus a great deal more impressive than one might imagine, and a testimony to God's glory. Indeed, one notes upon becoming Christian that though the world is actually much worse off than one imagined, it's no less endurable; it's further from where it should be, but still just where it is, thanks be to God. It is much darker, but infinitely brighter, even though the light sometimes does seem much further away.
This has great implications on the interpersonal scale: if, as Amos proposes, you are to hate what God hates, then you cannot rationally hate a particularly notable sinner without hating yourself just about as much. The difference between a great saint and a great sinner may be as great as the distance between east and west, but the real meterstick is the distance to the sun. Human virtue and vice are vanishing in comparison to the question of whether one exists in perfect obedience to God, tortured ambivalence, or complete depravity, and every one of us falls into the middle category. Now, this might appear to mean that the moral thing to do would be to annhiliate one another in an enormous, worldwide steel-cage grudgematch, but that wouldn't really be very productive, or make a very good story. That aside, the scale really is so great that the only other rational option is to forgive one another continually. Only he who is without sin is truly qualified to throw that first stone, and He refrained. We had best follow suit. We've been forgiven a staggering debt; to be angry over a few pennies is nothing short of madness.
This does not by any means require us, however, to look over one anothers' evil acts. Indeed, hatred of another's evil, without hatred of the person, is an almost necessary extension of love. It is precisely because I love myself that I am angry at my own failings, and feel them to be beneath my dignity; indeed, often the hatred of my own sins is the very best weapon I have against them. The same logic easily applies to others. Now, it's not a good idea to be a busybody (or a raging maniac;) the goal isn't to bring others pain or annoyance but rather to transform them, so unless you've a good shot at that, it's often best to stay silent. And none of this prohibits human justice: it remains appropriate for us to maintain whatever social equilibrium we can. But all of it ought to be done without malice. When those sentenced to capital punishment** hear, "May God have mercy on your soul," it really should be an earnest prayer.
The obvious question that presents itself after this, naturally, is "Why does God love us then?" There's an easy answer and a mind-numbingly hard answer. For now, the easy one, which is simple and not very satisfying. It doesn't meet our desire to feel like we can stand on our own two moral little feet at all, but here it is: He loves us because we are. Instead of not being, we are. Instead of not creating us, He did. This is a greater gulf than that between the furthest stars, and a sufficient answer for now.
If this all seems quite horrifying, it more or less is, and this isn't the worst of it. As I say, though, it doesn't actually make matters worse than they already were. And in the end, we are given to understand that we may hear, from the lips of the Most High, "Servant, well done." But that hinges on a longer answer, and must be for another day. I'm trying to limit myself to one of these a day at most. I could easily get addicted, and this is long enough, but it did seem necessary to prohibit a gross misinterpretation of the first post. I should probably take a day off tomorrow in response; I've reading to do anyway.
* Whenever I ran a postapocalyptic game up in Providence, I wasn't talking about a possible future. I was talking about right now. If I ever do again, same deal, and if I do run a game at all, it probably will be a postapocalyptic world with no water again. What can I say; it's just my genre.
** Not a judgment on the rightness of capital punishment. Related issue, clearly, but huge.