Hate What is Evil

Don't you absolutely hate it when those with power perpetrate evil? It's so wrong! The innocent are hurt because evil has crept out of powerful hearts into the lives of little people – the poor, the needy. And this isn't just something hypothetical. It's happening right now, right under our noses. So the temptation for us, for you, for me, is to hate those powerful people, rather than hating the evil that they're perpetrating. Jacques Lusseyran was a blind teenager when the Nazis occupied France. He joined the resistance, helping lead a secret network that distributed underground newspapers. Betrayed and sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, he nevertheless refused to allow the hatred that surrounded him to poison his soul. Even in that darkness, he encouraged his fellow prisoners with hope, refusing to hate the guards. "Hatred," he later wrote, "blinds us more than any blindness." He could see what many sighted people couldn't: that evil must be resisted, but people must still be loved. Which brings us to the verse we looked at yesterday: Romans 12:9 Your love must be real. Hate what is evil. Do only what is good. How fascinating. Here we are in the very Word of God, and we read about love and hatred all in the one breath. If it weren't for the first part – Your love must be real –  it'd be easy to interpret the second part – Hate what is evil – as a license to hate people. But that's not it at all. Absolutely, evil must be resisted. But the people must still be loved. That's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.