Loving Bin Laden

[seekerz]

I believe that it would be morally wrong to express love toward Bin Laden. There’s is a time for everything, including a time to hate.

I pray for Bin Laden often. But he better be praying that my prayer’s aren’t answered.

Morally wrong to love? That’s a new concept to me…

 

[Valke2]

Morally wrong to love? That’s a new concept to me…

Do we not learn that there is a time to sow, a time to reap, a time to love, a time to hate? Does God not express hatred at times? Doesn’t Micha tell us that God hated Esau? If we are to express love during these times, isn’t it an action that goes against God? And if so, isn’t it morally wrong?

 

[Shoshana]

Do we not learn that there is a time to sow, a time to reap, a time to love, a time to hate? Does God not express hatred at times? Doesn’t Micha tell us that God hated Esau? If we are to express love during these times, isn’t it an action that goes against God? And if so, isn’t it morally wrong?

Did that not change when Jesus was born? In the OT Jesus said it was allowed to divorce because He said they were hard headed at the time and could not understand more that that. Jesus brings the new idea idea if you lust after a woman, you are committing adultery.

Same thing with love…we are to love our enemy.

 

[Valke2]

Did that not change when Jesus was born? In the OT Jesus said it was allowed to divorce because He said they were hard headed at the time and could not understand more that that. Jesus brings the new idea idea if you lust after a woman, you are committing adultery.

Same thing with love…we are to love our enemy.

You can love your enemy. I pray for Bin Laden’s death and I would hope that if I ever had to see the man, God would give me the strength to hate him without remorse. Besides, there may indeed be a time to love your enemy, but there is also a time to hate him.

 

[Shoshana]

You can love your enemy. I pray for Bin Laden’s death and I would hope that if I ever had to see the man, God would give me the strength to hate him without remorse. Besides, there may indeed be a time to love your enemy, but there is also a time to hate him.

Can you please provide a quote?

 

[Valke2]

Can you please provide a quote?

“But whoever blasphemes against the holy Spirit will never have forgiveness,
but is guilty of an everlasting sin.” [Mark 3:29] THis at the very least implies hatred for the sinner who blasphemes. I do not know what the Church’s position on this verse is.

“You hate all wrongdoers.” Psalm 5:5

The just man rejoices when vengence he sees, his feet he will bathe in the wicked one’s blood. Psalm 58:11

There are many other quotes which discuss Jesus’ anger, wrath, hatred of wickedness, etc. I am sure you can explain why these quotes do not condone hatred under any circumstances but I would have to disagree with such an interpetation.

Ecclesiastes 3:8 - 8 A time to love, And a time to hate….

 

[Valke2]

These six things the LORD hates, Yes, seven are an abomination to Him: 17 A proud look, A lying tongue, Hands that shed innocent blood, 18 A heart that devises wicked plans, Feet that are swift in running to evil, 19 A false witness who speaks lies, And one who sows discord among brethren. Proverbs 6:19

 

[Valke2]

Here’s are quotes from an article from Rabbi Botech’s article “Moral People must learn to hate.” The entire article can be found here:
worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=41601
:
How many times have we heard that the problem with the world today is that there isn’t enough love, when precisely the opposite is true? **Evil currently stalks the earth because there isn’t enough hate. Moral people, afraid of being poisoned by hate, are becoming indifferent to evil. **

Historian Paul Johnson estimates that at least 100 million civilians were murdered in the 20th century alone by despotic and murderous tyrants. All too many of the murderers… died comfortably in their sleep… The world simply could not summon enough hatred of these individuals or their actions to stop them and bring them to justice.

Rehabilitation of murderers and dictators has also become the norm. … And still the good people of the world refuse to hate, thereby weakening their commitment to fight evil.

Hatred is only evil when it is directed at the good and at the innocent. It is positively Godly when it is directed at cold-blooded killers, motivating us to fight and eradicate them before more people die.

He who does not hate Abu Musab al Zarkawi – a monster who shouts “God is great” while sawing off the heads of innocent human beings – is barely human themselves. Can a man love innocent victims without hating their tormentors? Loving victims might generate compassion for their suffering. But hating the perpetrators will generate action to stop their orgy of murder.

Which “moral” man or woman can lay claim to decency if they are not sickened to their stomachs by the likes of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden? Can a moral man have compassion for a dying Yasser Arafat when such love and compassion ought to be reserved exclusively for his victims? While innocence should evoke compassion, evil should evoke only contempt.

Bobby Frank Cherry, the Klansman who killed four black girls in a church bombing in Alabama in 1963, died last week in prison. On my radio show, I expressed my satisfaction that another evil man had perished from the earth. A black caller phoned in disgust. “I used to be like you, Shmuley,” he said. “When I was a boy growing up in the segregated South, I hated the Klan so much that I wanted to be a sniper and shoot them. But as a Christian, I have worked my whole life to fight that hatred and get it out of my system.”

I answered him:

What do you think God would prefer? That you use your energy to fight your hatred, or use your energy to fight evil? Now, no one would sanction your running around and indiscriminately shooting people, because that itself is immoral and illegal. That’s not hatred. That’s rage.

But it was due to prosecutors’ odium for this man that they pursued him for almost 40 years, finally obtaining a conviction and sending him to prison just two years ago. If they had not detested him and his actions, he would have died peacefully at his home and the message would have gone out that you can get away with murder.

Hatred …like any emotion, is neutral. "its morality determined solely by the object to which it is directed. A man’s desire to fleetingly conquer a woman is immoral, but the ambition to conquer disease is Godly. The same is true of hatred. It is demonic only when directed at innocent people who happen to have darker skin than you, but truly appropriate when directed at someone whose murderous actions have made the world a darker place.

Exhortations to hate all manner of evil abound in the Bible. The book of Proverbs declares, “The fear of the Lord is to hate evil.” Likewise, King David declares regarding the wicked, “I have hated them with a deep loathing. They are as enemies to me.” Hatred is the moral response to those who have gone beyond the pale of decency by committing acts which unweave the basic fabric of civilized living. To encounter evil is to come under the injunction of never showing even a morsel of sympathy lest we weaken our determination to destroy it.

…

 

[Valke2]

cont.

Many of my Christian brothers and sisters mistakenly believe that God loathes hatred. They quote Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek and his admonishment to love your enemies as proof that we dare never hate. On my radio show, many evangelical Christians have called to tell me that, in God’s eyes, we are all sinners, and thus from a heavenly perspective Osama bin Laden and the average housewife from Kansas are equal. Osama must indeed face justice for his crimes, but we dare not hate him seeing that Jesus still loves him.

But this is a travesty of Jesus’ teachings and would make this great Hebrew personality into someone who had contempt for his victims as he extended love to their murderers. Jesus advocated turning the other check to petty slights and affronts to our honor, not to mass graves and torture chambers. Likewise, while Jesus taught that we ought to love our own enemies, this did not apply to God’s enemies. Our enemies are people who are our rivals for a promotion at work. God’s enemies are those who slaughter his children.

Let not any Christian think that Jesus’ sympathy was for anyone other than the oppressed and the poor. True, the Bible commands us to “love our neighbor” as ourselves, but the man who kills children is not our neighbor. Having cast off the image of God, he has lost his divine spark and is condemned to eternal oblivion from which not even a belief in salvation will rescue him. He or she who murders God’s children has been lost to God forever and has abandoned all entitlement to love, earning eternal derision in its stead.

To love the terrorist who flies a civilian plane into a building or a white supremacist who drags a black man three miles while tied to the back of a car is not just scandalous, it is sinful. To love evil is itself evil and constitutes a passive form of complicity. The old saying is right: Those who are kind to the cruel end up being cruel to the kind.
…

For a murderer to lament his actions in public and achieve instant absolution is an affront to everything forgiveness stands for. There are those offenses for which there is no forgiveness, borders that are crossed for which there is no return. Mass murder is foremost among them.

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Only if we hate the truly evil passionately will we summon the determination to fight them fervently. Odd and uncomfortable as it may seem, hatred has its place. It is time for moral people to learn how to hate again.

 

[mdgspencer]

This thread is excellent because it is getting to the nitty gritty.
I recall Jesus saying love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you. I would think the second phrase explains the sort of way we can love our enemies. It may be that we see hatred in the Old Testament. However, Jesus said that you were told in the Old Testament to hate your enemies, but I tell you to love your enemies.
Still it may be best protect ourselves from our personal enemies or to kill our national enemies. There were soldiers in the Gospels, such as the centurian, and Jesus never told them to lay down their arms. But hatred? This is not necessary to deal with such people, and indeed Jesus told us specifically to pray for them.

 

[Valke2]

This thread is excellent because it is getting to the nitty gritty.
I recall Jesus saying love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you. I would think the second phrase explains the sort of way we can love our enemies. It may be that we see hatred in the Old Testament. However, Jesus said that you were told in the Old Testament to hate your enemies, but I tell you to love your enemies.
Still it may be best protect ourselves from our personal enemies or to kill our national enemies. There were soldiers in the Gospels, such as the centurian, and Jesus never told them to lay down their arms. But hatred? This is not necessary to deal with such people, and indeed Jesus told us specifically to pray for them.

Things like that quote from jesus would be what Jews call building a fence around the Torah. He took a law, love your neighbor and he expanded on it to love your enemeis. So that we have even less chance of breaking the commandment to love our neighbor, since we are now focusing on loving our enemies. I think the view of “enemies” as those would would seek to slander against us, detract from our personal honor, etc., makes sense when defining what Jesus was talking about. I don’t see how it is a moral imperative to love those who seek to do murder.

So there are really two questions we’re asking now. Is it necessary to love all enemies? And, is there a time when we should hate our enemies?

 

[mdgspencer]

This issue raises many questions. I recall though the account St. Therese gave in her autobiography. From the news she learned of a murderer who was going to be executed. For some reason she felt called upon to pray much for his conversion before he died. Later from the newspaper she found that right before his execution he repented, and she felt that her own prayer was what had done it.

Things like that quote from jesus would be what Jews call building a fence around the Torah. He took a law, love your neighbor and he expanded on it to love your enemeis. So that we have even less chance of breaking the commandment to love our neighbor, since we are now focusing on loving our enemies. I think the view of “enemies” as those would would seek to slander against us, detract from our personal honor, etc., makes sense when defining what Jesus was talking about. I don’t see how it is a moral imperative to love those who seek to do murder.

So there are really two questions we’re asking now. Is it necessary to love all enemies? And, is there a time when we should hate our enemies?

 

[mmm1]

Let’ not forget that we can love the sinner but hate the sin.

 

[mmm1]

Valke2, I hope you don’t mind if I mention that I just noticed from your profile that you are Jewish. Of course, you’re not held to our call from Jesus to love our enemies. Actually, I can only begin to understand the anger & emotions that must result from the persecution that Jewish people have suffered recently & over the ages. I don’t know how people in Israel deal with being surrounded by people who hate them. Being from th NY area, 9/11 is probably never too far from your mind.

So, I hope I didn’t sound flippant in my last post. Even Christians usually fail at Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies. I think that is why I also agree with the other posters that God was glorified with the example that the Amish people gave to the world. I do wonder if all people, regardless of beliefs could follow this philosophy, that we would be much better off.

 

[Valke2]

I didn’t take your remarks as flippant. I have heard the love the sinner, hate the sin explanation. Is there agreement among christians that one should never hate the sinner, no matter what? Is that how Jesus’ teaching to love one’s enemy is interpreted?

 

[mmm1]

I didn’t take your remarks as flippant. I have heard the love the sinner, hate the sin explanation. Is there agreement among christians that one should never hate the sinner, no matter what? Is that how Jesus’ teaching to love one’s enemy is interpreted?

Good, I’m glad. As far as how Christians interpret it, there probably isn’t much of a consensus, but I think most think theoretically it applies to all sinners all the time. (I’m just a soccer mom who was away from the Church for a long time, though ) I know that practically speaking, most of us spend too little time thinking about it.

 

[Valke2]

Here is some comments I lifted from the online Catholic Encyclopdia. It unequivically states that hatred aimed directly at a person, in order to see what is evil or unloveable in him, is always a sin. So the following should be read with that assertion in mind:

For instance, it would be lawful to pray for the death of a perniciously active heresiarch with a view to putting a stop to his ravages among the Christian people. Of course, it is clear that this apparent zeal must not be an excuse for catering to personal spite or party rancour. Still, even when the motive of one’s aversion is not impersonal, when, namely, it arises from the damage we may have sustained at the hands of others, we are not guilty of sin unless besides feeling indignation we yield to an aversion unwarranted by the by the hurt we have suffered. This aversion may be grievously or venially sinful in proportion to its excess over that which the injury would justify.

 

[mmm1]

Here is some comments I lifted from the online Catholic Encyclopdia. It unequivically states that hatred aimed directly at a person, in order to see what is evil or unloveable in him, is always a sin. So the following should be read with that assertion in mind:

For instance, it would be lawful to pray for the death of a perniciously active heresiarch with a view to putting a stop to his ravages among the Christian people. Of course, it is clear that this apparent zeal must not be an excuse for catering to personal spite or party rancour. Still, even when the motive of one’s aversion is not impersonal, when, namely, it arises from the damage we may have sustained at the hands of others, we are not guilty of sin unless besides feeling indignation we yield to an aversion unwarranted by the by the hurt we have suffered. This aversion may be grievously or venially sinful in proportion to its excess over that which the injury would justify.

Frankly, you raise some good points, but I still have a hard time agreeing with you completely. Was the above paragraph also quoted from the Catholic encyclopedia? I think it speaks to whether or not anger or retribution or justice is sinful, but it doesn’t really speak about a Christian’s higher calling to love our enemy. I mean, we should avoid sin, but also pro-actively love our neighbor. I know it’s naive, but in the example above, I think praying for the person’s conversion to good, rather than praying for his death, is more effective.

I hadn’t read the article by Rabbi Botech before, & I think there are VERY good points about tolerating evil because we are afraid of being poisoned by hate. But, I have to maintain, however, that I think it’s possible to fight evil without hating the evil person. Like mdgspencer mentioned, I think loving someone who is truly evil should be limited to praying for them. We are understandably revulsed & conflicted with feelings of anger & fear when we think of someone like Bin Laden. “Love” for an enemy should never rise to the level of letting them get away with something or providing them support.

I think it could actually be more efficient to fight evil without lots of anger or hatred. If the prosecuter that the Rabbi mentioned was too filled with hate, he might have been too emotional & missed something. I would rather have a calm, cool & collected prosecuter than one that was too emotional or involved in the case. I do think the article raises good points, despite my disagreement with certain points.

 

[Brendan]

I believe that it would be morally wrong to express love toward Bin Laden. There’s is a time for everything, including a time to hate.

I pray for Bin Laden often. But he better be praying that my prayer’s aren’t answered.

To love someone is to desire the greatest good for them. Sometimes, the “greatest good” is that the person in question to accept the Gospel, repent of their sins and do penance\attonement. via the willful acceptance of just punishment for the temporal affects of sin.

So yes, it IS a morally good thing to love Bin Laden. For loving him means that we desire his repentance, conversion and attonement.

 

[Shoshana]

To love someone is to desire the greatest good for them. Sometimes, the “greatest good” is that the person in question to accept the Gospel, repent of their sins and do penance\attonement. via the willful acceptance of just punishment for the temporal affects of sin.

So yes, it IS a morally good thing to love Bin Laden. For loving him means that we desire his repentance, conversion and attonement.

To desire the death of an enemy is not found in the NT. Actually, what is shown is the opposite. The early christians were martyred not only by the Jews but also by the Romans. They prayed for those who persecuted them and never laid an arm against those who were torturing them to death.

No different than Jesus…