Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

There are six things the Lord hates,
    seven that are detestable to him:
        haughty eyes,
        a lying tongue,
        hands that shed innocent blood,
        a heart that devises wicked schemes,
        feet that are quick to rush into evil,
        a false witness who pours out lies
        and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

• Proverbs 6:16-19

“The man who hates and divorces his wife,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “does violence to the one he should protect,” says the Lord Almighty.
So be on your guard, and do not be unfaithful.

• Malachi 2:16

“I have loved you,” says the Lord.
“But you ask, ‘How have you loved us?’
“Was not Esau Jacob’s brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.”
Edom may say, “Though we have been crushed, we will rebuild the ruins.”
But this is what the Lord Almighty says: “They may build, but I will demolish. They will be called the Wicked Land, a people always under the wrath of the Lord. You will see it with your own eyes and say, ‘Great is the Lord—even beyond the borders of Israel!’

• Malachi 1:2-5

“The next morning before I sat down to  type or even search the Scriptures, I prayed, ‘Heavenly Father, I need you to speak to me. My first reaction is that hate is irreconcilable with a God who is love, yet I see clearly from Proverbs that there are in fact things you hate. Teach me. In Jesus’s name, amen.’
“No sooner had amen passed my lips than the Holy Spirit began to speak. I scribbled down what I heard as quickly as it came. Here are the highlights of what I hope to explore in this chapter:
– God hates all that unmakes love.
– God hates what unmakes and breaks those he loves.
– God hates what undermines his image and distorts our identity.
“In short, our Father hates all that perverts and corrupts love. God loves people. God loves the broken. God loves the bound. God loves the sinner. God is love, and love never hates people, because people are who God loves.
“God loves every one … but God does not love every thing.
“In the genesis of creation, God made all things good and for our good. Sadly, I don’t need to tell you that We no longer walk the uncorrupted soil of Eden. The very earth below our feet groans, aching for its restoration. In the same way, every human heart is filled with a desperate longing for the revelation and the realization of all that is true, just, and beautiful. We want to see love gain its full expression in every area of life. Is it possible that we have idolized love and in the process called things love that are not? Have we believed our actions were loving when in actuality they were not? God is love, but love is not God. We worship God, not love. Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:39). But danger arises when we separate love from the parameters of our God.
“God is love (1 John 4:8). God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29). In him we live (Acts 17:28). When we pull these truths together, it is not a stretch to say, ‘We live in the consuming fire of God’s love.’ ”

• Lisa Bevere, Adamant

Ms. Bevere spent a few paragraphs speaking of her trouble reconciling God being love with any form of hate.

This chapter in her book begins with this quote:

“We cannot love God without hating that which He hates.”

• Charles Spurgeon

She goes on in the chapter to expand upon the list of hated things in Proverbs 6 to include “everything that undermines justice and truth, when widows, orphans, and aliens are oppressed, the abuse of the elderly and the neglect of family, what perverts his goodness and taints his gifts, when love twists into selfishness and friends become enemies, what changes his image and distorts ours, when evil is called good and the innocent are killed, and when arrogance and pride degrade us.”

She picks various Scriptures to bolster her points and tie them into what Proverbs 6 says.

God hates sin.  If God did not hate sin, He would not have had all those “Thou shalt not” statements in the Ten Commandments, and all the supporting rules and laws.  Everyone wants to be a backyard lawyer and excuse one thing away or another, but when it does not pass the scrutiny of the passage from Proverbs 6 above or Ms. Bevere’s explanation which gives more clarity rather than expanding on those points, then God hates it.

Ms. Bevere says that God does not hate humans, but the Scripture from Malachi where God loved Jacob and hated Esau seems to contradict what she said.  Yet, when you look at the context of that statement in Malachi, God is comparing the nations of Judah versus Edom.  Malachi probably wrote his prophecy about one hundred years after the remnant of Judah returned to Jerusalem to start the reconstruction.  There was no promise from God to reconstruct Edom where they repeatedly made human sacrifices and worshipped false gods.  Even in the days of Esau himself, he married pagan wives and followed pagan customs.  His clan followed suit and did things that angered God.

I believe that it is possible that some people have blasphemed the Holy Spirit so that in their present state of hatred toward God, they could never see anything except their hatred.  Anyone telling them about Jesus would be treated with hatred and venom in return.  There would be no hope short of a massive rewiring of the part of their brains that harbors that hate.  We say that while there is breath, there is hope, but with some people that hope may be gone.  But even then, I do not think God hates that person who is destined to the Lake of Fire.

Can God hate the human?  Even in judgment, it seems not.  When he casts the unbelievers, those that curse His name, into the Lake of Fire, He gives them what they wanted, a lifetime (eternity) of separation from Him.  They will not like what they get.  Then they will know how much God did for them down to the cellular level.  For those who claimed “Lord, Lord” but did not have Jesus in their hearts, God is not saying what He says in anger or hatred toward the person. He simply says, “Depart from me, I never knew you.”

With all that dispensed at the Great White Throne, God is left with those who want to glorify His name forever.  He will only have those whose greatest desire was more and more of Jesus.  We lose nothing of this world, for this world is broken, and we gain eternity.

Lord, guide me.  You are Love.  But anything that disturbs that Love is what You hate.  We hate that too.  Help us to distinguish between the one doing those bad things and the bad things that they do.  Help us to love our enemies.  In Your name I pray.  Amen.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.