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“The LORD trieth the righteous: but the wicked and him that loveth violence his soul hateth.” — Psalm 11:5

Does this bother you? Are you disturbed by the psalmist’s assertion that there are people who God’s soul hates?

There is a sense in which God’s hatred of anything is a response to God’s love. God’s love is protective. Against all that threatens it. Violence threatens the objects of God’s love.

Let me ask you this: at your best, how do you feel about that part of you that loves wickedness and violence?

Do you not repudiate that false self within you in order to embrace the Christ-life which is the truth about who you are and who God made you to be?

Doesn’t God know that the false self within you wars against the true you that He loves passionately and sacrificially? We must embrace this paradox in our understanding of God if we are to fully appreciate His love.

It is love that produces this level of hate because it is wickedness and violence that destroy those made in the Father’s image.

God despises that which destroys what he loves. Ask him for a special grace today to hate within you that which destroys you and your relationship with Him and know that His love for you is so deep and strong that he will fight for you against all wickedness and violence.

“Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup. “ — from Psalm 11:6

There is another dimension of this hate that God has for the wickedly violent: judgment. When we try to assign human emotion to God it is called “anthropomorphism.” That is a complicated word that means any attempt to understand something other than a human being by human standards.

God’s hate is not man’s hate.

Man expresses arbitrary hatred based upon emotional considerations (or lack thereof). God’s anger is against anything that goes against him and it is expressed in wrath and judgment. Even that is paradoxical for he is, at the same time, actively and lovingly reaching out to the individual who is embroiled in sin and rebellion.

God judges the sin and the sinner while sacrificially taking the penalty upon himself and pleading for all to come to repentance.

When we would understand the horror of the wrath of God, physical descriptions are required to impress upon us how awful it is to come under judgment. The reality is more horrible. To go against God is to place ourselves in the concentrated path of all the evil God is flushing out of a sinful world to fashion his Kingdom of love.

Take this truth and embrace it. In Christ, you are not under judgment. Cheer for the triumph of God’s will and invite all that will hear to come into his merciful grace. Pray for the victory of truth, righteousness, and holiness in your own life and in the life of your community.

The more we understand God and know God, the more we love God in response to God’s love. The more we love God, the more we love people, the objects of God’s love. The more we love people, the more we hate violence because violence is the ultimate violation of humanity and divinity.

Some kinds of hatred are, in reality, the consequences of love.