What can we hate?

Do you spend time critiquing the people around you? Do they just keep looking worse and worse to you? Judah exposes this attitude for the narrow, self-centered posturing that it is. Look on the world with love! -Editor.

I can’t stand those blind idiots who rant about the self-satisfied fools who condemn judgmental morons for categorically hating bigots (and just between you and me, although I believe that bigots are people too, you know what I think about people…)

So I was reading Secrets of Heaven no. 1079. It’s about Noah, after the flood. The water has gone down, and Noah and his clan have disembarked and thanked God for their deliverance. Life returns to normal. Noah even plants a vineyard and makes some wine, but he overdoes it. Drunk and naked, he is sprawled out in his tent, asleep, when in walks his son, Ham. Ham goes and brings his two brothers, presumably to let them in on the joke. But it’s no laughing matter, as Shem and Japheth are savvy enough to know, and they walk backwards until they’ve draped some clothing over their father’s bare form.

Who is Ham? What does his mockery mean? According to the passage I was reading, Ham represents those contemptuous folks who only ever notice the failings in the people around them.

About those people—you know who I’m talking about: I can think of a bunch of them off the top of my head. I can picture them now, gleefully recounting the follies of others. What benighted morons. They should know better.

Oops.

Let me take this opportunity to quote a bit:

Where there is no charity, there is the love of self, and therefore hatred against all who do not favor self. Consequently such persons see in the neighbor only what is evil, and if they see anything good, they either perceive it as nothing, or put a bad interpretation upon it.

Is it possible that I, at this very moment, am seeing only what is evil in my neighbor? It’s remarkable how quickly and subtly my picture of a person can change: one moment, Joe is a fond acquaintance; the next, I’m feeling delightfully repulsed by his warty face and uncomfortable stench (metaphorically speaking, of course).

What happened? All I did was read something from the Writings. And think of some examples—you know, applying it to life.

Seriously, it is an inspiring passage. The question is, where do you get your inspiration from?

What happened? How can my sense of reality shift so drastically and at the same time so smoothly, like butter falling off a hot knife? Although there’s lots of fun stuff to explore about a person’s spiritual environment, I’ll leave the particular mechanics of how we get snookered into a false perspective for another article. For now I’m focusing on the basic self-examination that I feel impelled to do when I read such a passage. How often do I look out upon humanity with an eye to magnifying the bad? How often, when I’m reading some New Church collateral work, do I latch on to ideas that I want to parade as foolish and harmful? When I read Google news, I get up from the computer and feel excited about people, or do I get up with a sick feeling in my stomach and a scowl on my face? do

And the challenge that lingers is this: there is evil; there is harm; there is grief and sorrow and hatred. And don’t we need to identify what’s evil, so that good may conquer? So that what we love, what we believe to be really real, can flourish in us and in the world around us? It is undeniable that other people are afflicted by evil, sometimes with what seems to be alarming participation. What do we do with it? How do we respond? Shouldn’t we “do something about it”? “There oughta be a law!”

Sometimes it looks like this or that person or group of people is particularly entrenched in something from hell, and we choose to adapt our response to those people in the context of that evil. But for God’s sake, let’s love each other first and foremost—love each other like we want our worst national enemy or our biggest church heretic or our noisiest bigot to actually be free from evil, and not damned. Like we actually long for them to say in their spirit, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a firm spirit within me; restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation!” It’s a tall order, I know, but listen to what’s going on spiritually when we focus on evil. Again from that same number:

For [in the other life] with those who are in no charity, the feeling of hatred shines forth from every single thing; they desire to examine everyone, and even to judge him; nor do they desire anything more than to find out what is evil, constantly cherishing the disposition to condemn, punish, and torment.

Naturally, a frothing bigot is the perfect target for a self-righteous critic of mankind. And that sniveling fool is the subject of eloquent rants by the People Against Criticism circles, etc, etc. Not a happy state of life. But it gets worse. Consider the alternative:

Whereas—very differently—those who are in the faith of charity observe what is good, and if they see anything evil and false, they excuse it, and if they can, try to amend it in him, as is here said of Shem and Japheth. […] But they who are in charity scarcely see the evil of another, but observe all his goods and truths, and put a good interpretation on what is evil and false. Such are all the angels, which they have from the Lord, who bends all evil into good.

On the one hand, imagine waking up every morning with this perspective emblazoned on your heart—would life be anything but a joy? An exercise comes to mind: think of the human being, past or present, whom you despise most: now picture everything you know about them—all their depravity, all the legends, all the rumors; now, don the angelic worldview outlined above and take another look. Can you bring yourself to do it? What do you see? How does it feel?

So, on the other hand, who can possibly accept this teaching? What about the very real problems in people’s lives? What about their follies and foibles? What about their catastrophic mistakes and twisted delusions? What about their abject cruelty and cold-hearted lust? Are we to turn a blind eye to evil and pretend that life is nothing but butterflies and lollipops and puffy pink clouds?

I don’t think it works, in light of numerous other New Church teachings, to suppose that we must do nothing to protect what is good and true. But when it comes to evil, have you noticed how defense-oriented the Writings are? For the most part, fighting evil is qualified as protecting good; the emphasis is always the good and true; love can’t begin until I reject evil, but love isn’t hating evil; love itself is unequivocally good and productive (despite being present with and loving the lowest devils, the Lord Himself has no contact with evil, see True Christian Religion 56). To me in my murky, self-absorbed path of life, evil is something that needs to be dealt with, to be reacted against, to be fixed, to be fought, to be focused on. But I am not in heaven. And the more I rant and rave about evil, the more it blackens my horizon.

As to what the balance is between a careless ignorance of harm and a merciful, informed ignorance that looks to the good in others—your guess is as good as mine.

But from now on, when I see the need to highlight someone’s mistakes, maybe I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt, shun some contempt and pride, and re-focus on the good in that person that I want to reinforce. Yup—even those #&@!* people (you pick) who are involved in the “middle-east” conflict(s).

Perhaps the Lord Jesus Christ wishes them well.

Do I?

Judah Synnestvedt

Judah E. Synnestvedt is a person who has problems, too.

Comments

[Joel Glenn]

Hey Judah, thanks for this article, I really enjoyed it. I think it's so useful for me to remember that when I read about evils, the first place to look is myself, not other people or abstract from people entirely. My comment, or maybe question, is what about the inverse of judging people too harshly? I have had times when I excused someone's evils because doing something about them would seemingly involved judgment, only to have someone else call them out on their evils in such a way that was useful, productive, and accepted by the person in question.

[Brian Smith]

My thought for Joel -

If we are doing the work of looking at ourselves, that is where we must id and surrender our evil loves.
What happens around us does not excuse us from this primary work.
However, other people do all sorts of crazy stuff. For me these days, the effort is teach myself to call it like I see it. I want to train my thinking to be less excusing of bad behavior in other people. Occasionally, the opportunity will be right for me to verbalize this to them (though not often). However, whether or not I confront a person directly, my work continues to examine my criticisms of other behavior for any signs of hate, feelings of superiority, assumption that I know their motives, or dismissing of them as a person.

In the end, it is a disservice to other to passively tolerate their poor behavior. It conveys greater respect to expect higher standards of them and sometimes ask them about what you observe in their behavior.

My thoughts for the moment...

Brian

[Coleman]

Thanks for the article, Judah. One of the things I really love about the story - and something that I think helps go toward answering Joel's question - is one sentence from that Arcana Coelstia quote: "they excuse it, and if they can, try to amend it in him." I think that's the key: they both excuse it AND try to amend it. Which means they aren't saying that evil isn't evil. I think it's rather giving the person all the benefit of the doubt as to WHY they're in evil (ignorance, bad upbringing, etc.), but still doing what we can to try to correct the problem if it's a problem. I love that picture of Shem and Japheth walking backwards with the blanket: they avoid looking at their father's nakedness, but they don't just leave it alone - they do what they can to amend it.

[Isaac]

Brother Judah,

It is not good to hold hatred and contempt in the heart. The Lord is a God of love and mercy. We are to love Him above all and our neighbor as ourselves. If anyone hold hatred in his heart and does not repent of it, he cannot receive the Lord's love and will be damned when he passes on and his works are discovered to spring from hatred. Hatred is breathing out of hell with such fury and viciousness, from devils who chose it in the world, and those devils work so artfully to keep their foothold in human hearts.

I have hated to be instructed, and certainly not rebuked. If there was some self interest, some delight, some praise, some gain, some natural affection to be had in learning, I have sat front row and eaten it up. But when instruction went clearly against myself, my evil will made inward excuse not to receive it, and took hot offense. Then, after some reflection time, I would take the instruction or rebuke and go about making the necessary "improvements" that I saw could pertain to my betterment, so that I wouldn't be caught lacking again in that same area. Above all I did not want to appear naked or foolish.

That was not repentance. That was evil. There was nothing good in me to be improved on. The only thing good was the capacity to turn from my evil. The instruction was there for me to choose to deny myself and my appearance to others, take up my cross of actual endeavor against the hellish love I had delighted in, and start over again to fight every time hell rose up. But for YEARS, shunning conceit and taking rebuke never became as important as seeing how the so-called good in me could be defended and how the instruction could be turned around to MY benefit. Then I began priding myself at how I could see the good in others even while looking down on them.

There are EVIL people, and I was one of them. I thank the Lord for His presence in Brother Miller and Sister Ginny, which rebuked me so strongly that the way of whole repentance was undeniable unless I wanted to confirm my evil forever. I didn't want to confirm my evil forever, and by the Lord's mercy I am learning to receive rebuke and instruction of the heart, of the soul. I am not now good, nor in heaven. There is only One good, and I am learning to obey Him; and He keeps saying Repent, worker of iniquity. I say, Who me? He says, Yes you.

Just like our corrupt old man, evil people must be openly rebuked until they leave the world, and then again whenever they come to remembrance. People who incline toward evil, like our affections for the filth in us from hell, must likewise be forcefully rebuked, and perhaps they will repent. Having seen my own evil, I don't want any part of it and am willing to take every precaution to root it out. I hate it. I abhor it. It disgusts me. It makes my stomach turn and my head throb and my neck go stiff when it draws near and attacks or smooth talks or tries to seduce me. And that is why I have determined to stand and conquer it, because my soul depends on it. Why live with it? It has no love for me. It wants me destroyed. As I found out, you cannot live in peace with hell or evil people. A year ago, you could not live at peace with me. Outwardly, yes. But who wants that who knows the Lord?

Coleman points out from the Word that we must try to amend our neighbor, just as we must try to amend ourselves. That is loving. Some neighbors and some parts of ourselves will be unwilling to be amended. That is painful. They must be rooted out, cast out, and damned. The Lord's unmovable Divine Truth, His commandments, establish and carry out this order. His desire is to give us the power to root the evil out of ourselves and so also out of our community that we be not cast out; and we know He is laboring from Divine Love by means of Divine Wisdom to bring each of us out of our evil selves; and we can come out if we are willing. He would not command us to love Him and our neighbor if we could not. Without experiencing sin and its destruction, we could not know salvation. Sin is knowingly doing evil because you want to - not because you were miss-taught, not because you had a bad example, not because your uncle abused you, but because you WERE taught and warned and CHOSE to act from lust or envy or hatred. Of course are in no position to amend our neighbor if we have not yet amended our own self as to sin. And so repentance is our work, our war, our service, that when the Lord blesses for us to move to amend our neighbor it may be from Him and not from ourselves. Then it is He alone doing the work, and His means, His Law, is perfect in converting the soul, if the soul turns to Him.

So Repent! And teach others to do so, leading by your life. Make no excuse for others or yourself. Put no body above the truth. That is loving. If someone is insane, call him insane. What are his feelings? He needs to know. I was a self-righteous, self-worshiping, increasingly elated, disdainful, ambitious, delusional, little child of hell before the Lord woke me up. I do not now try to paint any imaginative picture of my brother's evil as perhaps not being so bad, because I have seen my monstrous old man in too many disgusting ways and I am at war to destroy him. Once I got mad when people shed a dim light on me. I thought I deserved a bright one. But now I know that if I had seen myself in heaven's light, I would have shuddered and then denied that it was me, or else hated the Lord because I wasn't ready yet to repent.

Hell is much more crafty than you or me, and is not to be tolerated or played with. It does not joke. It comes to steal, kill and destroy. There is refuge only in the power of the Lord, and He is here on a white horse, riding forth, conquering and to conquer. In order to follow him, we must take the white horse of His commandments, rightly divided, knowing that they are commandments, that they are the only way to our salvation.

If we choose to be clothed with the Sun, there will be those who hate us. The Lord says so, because they first hated Him. But there will be many who receive and glorify our Father which is in heaven.

Amen.