You Are Not Allowed to Hate // A Protest Against Prejudice

I want to say this before I start. I do not want to offend anyone. I want to prevent offence to people. Please keep this in mind as you read this, and don’t take it personally. I say this with passionate care, not with anger or hatred. 

I have been observing this lately, and it has alarmed me. We all know that in this world, there is a lot of intolerance and hatred. One nation hates another; one culture is intolerant of another. It has been a part of this fallen world since the curse. 

But what alarms me is that Christians allow themselves to hold this. I believe it is wrong for us to hate or be intolerant of a country, culture, race, or nation. We disagree with the sin; we are allowed to disagree with choices; but we are not allowed to hate a whole nation or culture or race. 

Take this, for example. Suppose you are Chinese and you hate the Japanese for what they did to your country in WWII. Was Japan right in what it did? No. Absolutely not. Does that mean that I, a Chinese person, can hate my Japanese coworker? No. My Japanese coworker had nothing to do with the Japanese army in 1944. My Japanese coworker may not even be related to those people! My Japanese coworker is 100% innocent. I am not allowed to dislike him for his nationality. This is 100% against Scripture. The Bible tells us to love one another. God loves the Japanese and died to save them. Hating a person is equal to murdering them. I hope you’ll agree with me that you won’t go murder the person from a nation you dislike! But hating him or disliking him for his nationality is the same thing. 

Another thing. I find a certain culture noisy, bragging, & bold. I’m allowed to think that. It’s my opinion, and I’m allowed to hold it. My culture is much more quiet; that’s why I think that. But I am not allowed to say my culture is better. I’m not allowed to hate people of that culture because I dislike some of their culture. I am not allowed to judge their culture. It is not mine. It is theirs & there is nothing wrong with it. (I’m talking personality here, not stuff like using a lot of blasphemy or anything immoral like that.) I mean that you cannot hate a culture because you think it is too cold, or too bubbly, or too impetuous. You can say you don’t particularly like it, you can say you don’t understand it—but you cannot hate it or intensely dislike it. I will admit, this year I had some difficult experience with people of a certain nation. For a time I struggled a lot with hating their culture. I was quick to get offended or annoyed. I was dismayed by this and I worked on changing my attitude. Now, I have a healthier attitude towards that country. I love my friends from that country, I agree to disagree with them, I’ve learned to hold my tongue & not begin useless debates. And I choose to not hate that culture, despite what I think they are or are not.

You are allowed your tastes & opinion. You are not allowed to shove it onto someone else, or judge them by your tastes. 

One more example. I have found that Christian people of one nation strongly dislike another nation. They’re ready to believe every bad thing of them. They’re ready to twist everything they hear about that nation to a negative sense. They say they don’t hate that nation, but they act as if they strongly dislike them. I submit that this is a wrong attitude. You cannot allow the past to make you dislike people in the present. Hey, if I wanted to, I could hate America for the stuff Americans did to Canada those times that they invaded us. I could hate Britain for how she treated Québec (and France). I could hate France for how she treated my First Nation ancestors. I could hate England for how she treated my Irish ancestors. But I refuse to hate. I refuse to dislike. I want to judge every individual by themselves. Not their family, not their race, not their colour, not their nation, not their former religion. I want to judge them for who they are, themselves. I want to love them as Christ loves them. 

I can’t tell you how unhappy it makes me when I hear people lambasting another nation because of things that happened hundreds of years ago. It breaks my heart. It’s so unfair. Unfairness is so wrong. God is 100% just and we need to be just too. We cannot—we must not—be unjust. 

Friends, I don’t even know what to say to end this. Please, just think about this. Pray about it. Look at your prejudices and see what is at the root. Ask God to help you see if you are being unjust or unChristlike. 

Again, I beg you not to be offended. Nothing is further from my intentions. I am simply pouring out my heart about a subject that I am passionate about. I pray it can be used to God’s glory.