This I Know

       On the road in small town America, I drove by a sign in front of someone’s house that said, “Jesus hates __”.  What was filled in the blank doesn’t matter.  Obviously,  the author was trying to make a comment on a current event and making sure that everyone knew that God had taken sides.  

I wonder what it takes to possess the kind of authority that can decide the mind of Jesus.  In this world of tension and conflicting opinions on a wide variety of topics, it seems some people are quite confident of the  truth.   However, especially when it came to making judgments,  it seems to me that Jesus generally took the opposite side of what people expected.  

Aside from the thinking process of the person putting such a sign in the front lawn, it still raises a perplexing question.  Does Jesus hate?  If Jesus was fully divine, fully human, wouldn’t he also have the full range of emotions that we have?  To love so intensely, so sacrificially, would he also have the flip side of the passions and also hate intently?   

        The idea of Jesus hating bothers me.  I prefer to picture a smiling Jesus with children on his lap.  Or Jesus is the Good shepherd gently guiding a flock of sheep.  I don’t generally spend much time thinking about how Jesus felt about the wolves.    But Jesus did throw the money changers out of the temple and was often short tempered with the Pharisees and even the disciples from time to time.  It seems obvious that Jesus got angry but that is different from hate.  What about the saying, “hate the sin, love the sinner?”  Did we get that differentiation from Jesus?  Is that what Jesus hates?  Is it sin that Jesus hates, or maybe anything that separates us from God’s love?  Sometimes I think out of our desire to see the loving side of Jesus we minimize the importance of justice and obedience.  Does Jesus hate injustice and disobedience?  Where is mercy in the midst of those things that are contrary to the will of God? 

Does Jesus hate?  What does Jesus hate?  I don’t know.  But thankfully,  Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.