416 Why We Hate (Hate: Part 2)
“Clothman, I loved your recent column on hate but you didn’t really answer Clothgirl’s question. You seemed to explain ‘what’ hate does to us but I thought she was asking ‘why’ we hate. Could you address this please?” -Laura
Dang it, I hate it when people point out my mistakes! Just joking Laura, I’ll try my best to answer this very difficult question of the ages.
As my dear mother hastily admits now, most of her days were spent gasping for life because she was being chocked by hate. For example, she sent my Aunt Bertie to her grave estranged for life over a doll house.
As children, Mom and Bertie never really got along. Shortly after they were grown their father died in a welding accident. Afterward, a doll house which he had made for both of them went to Bertie instead of my mother. That was because Bertie lived an hour away from his home in Michigan while mom, who wanted to get as far from home as possible, was then living in Florida. That doll house became the straw that broke the camel’s back for my mother and for the next 60 years I don’t think she spoke to Bertie a total of five times.
Envy. This one reason why we hate. We obsessively desire what others have.
Who can forget the heart wrenching images of tiny Ruby Bridges walking the gauntlet of hate at the Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans? By a judge’s order, Ruby was the first black child to attend a “whites only” school in the American South. That first year, all the parents of Frantz Elementary pulled their children out of school to protest the integration. As a result, Ruby spent her first year in a class of one. Furthermore, Ruby’s father lost his job as a result of the controversy, and her grandparents lost their place as tenant farmers. Control. We hate because we obsessively want things to be the way we want them to be, even when change is for the better.
But I think the primary fuel for hate is self-hatred. One of the wisest things Jesus ever said was, “Love others as well as you love yourself” (Matthew 22:39). Jesus knew that self-loathing is a one way ticket to hatred because the only way to endure self-hatred is to project that hate onto others.
Stacy and Becky were sexually molested by their father for over a decade until Stacy could bravely stand up against him. Stacy, after finding peace with God and herself, is now a joy-filled, vibrant woman whose love for her two children is deep and obvious to all. Becky, who just entered yet another in a string of terrible, temporary relationships with men, struggles with alcohol and drug abuse and doesn’t know how to love her children - when she gets to see them.
By God’s grace, Stacy has been able to forgive her father. Rejecting God’s grace, Becky still hates her father. Stacy loves herself and her life. Becky hates herself and everything about her life.
Self-hatred. We hate because we obsessively hang on to things that validate how bad of a person we think we are, consequently we perpetuate the cycle of hate.
By the way, when I became a grown man I befriended Aunt Bertie on my own and found her to be remarkably similar to my mother in every way and very lovable. I think mom and Bertie could have, and should have, loved each other in this life – especially when I saw the notorious doll house. It was as ugly as the hatred it engendered.
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