False Charges That Make No Sense

Hate Speech Charges Are Nonsensical


There are plenty of folk, it seems, who think that the following indicative sentence is hate speech: "if anyone is a homosexual (or supports, encourages, promotes, or defends) homosexuality and refuses to repent of his sin and turn to the Lord Jesus Christ, seeking His forgiveness, that person will fall under God's eternal judgement."

The Bible is God's eternal and inerrant revelation to mankind.  At least Christians believe so.  Its testimony and indictment of homosexuality is clear and plain, along with every transgression of the Ten Commandments.  It is also clear that if any man, woman, or child repent (or turn away) from sin and seek God's forgiveness and mercy as offered to them by the Christ, the Saviour of the world, their sins will be forgiven and they will inherit eternal life.

To express such things, we are now told, is hate speech.  This is a strange allegation indeed.

What A Difference Fifty Years Can Make

Psychology, Sin, and Bigotry

In 1960--more than half a century ago--a prominent psychologist, O. Hobart Mowrer wrote the following in the American Psychologist:

For several decades we psychologists looked upon the whole matter of sin and moral accountability as a great incubus and acclaimed our liberation from it as epoch-making.  But at length we have discovered that to be "free" in this sense, i.e., to have the excuse of being "sick" rather than sinful, is to court the danger of also becoming lost.  This danger is, I believe, betokened by the widespread interest in Existentialism which we are presently witnessing.  In becoming amoral, ethically neutral, and "free" we have cut the very roots of our being; lost our deepest sense of self-hood and identity; and with neurotics themselves, find ourselves asking: "who am I?"  O. Hobart Mowrer, "Sin, the Lesser of Two Evils," American Psychologist, XV (1960), pp. 301-304.

Fast forward to the present decade.

Nothing New

Taking Offence at God

Lucia, over at NZ Conservative, says she has come across some folk amongst the Chattering Classes who lump the Bible in with Mein Kampf because, by their lights, both are equally offensive.  The pretext has been the revelation that an aspiring politician in this country, a German national no less, has a rare signed copy of Hitler's Mein Kampf in his possession, along with a pen once owned by Stalin and a cigar holder once owned by Churchill.

Books can offend because of what they avow.  The Bible clearly offends multitudes of people because of what it reveals and avows.  After all, the Jewish leaders and the multitudes were grossly offended by Jesus Christ, the Son of God and had him executed with the willing complicity of the Gentile rulers, Pilate and Herod.  But not just the leaders were offended.  Common people who became his disciples for a time were so disillusioned and offended by His teaching that they turned away and had nothing more to do with Him (John 6: 66).  Even His own family rejected Him for a time.

Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow

Seven Thoughts On Becoming a Better Hater

Posted on Wednesday, January 1, 2014 

By Douglas Wilson 

Blog and Mablog

My resolution for the new year to become a better hater. But I suppose this requires at least some explanation before itemizing the ways I propose for improving on our hatreds.

“The fear of the Lord is to hate evil: pride, and arrogancy, and the evil way, and the froward mouth, do I hate” (Prov. 8:13).

The fear of the Lord is to hate what is evil. We should be able to immediately see that there is no virtue or vice to be found in a transitive verb. By themselves as verbs, love is not good and hatred is not bad. 
Everything rides on the direct object. If you love your mom, that is great, but if you love child porn — same verb and everything — you are being wicked. In order to honor God, the right verb has to be lined up with the right direct object. Genuine love lines up with certain things, and so does true-hearted hate.

In the passage quoted, the direct object for hate must be evil, pride, arrogance, an evil way, and perverted speech. If you look around at the landscape that lies before us in this freshly minted 2014, there are many objects that rightly qualify as direct objects of our hatred — if we are to be disciples of Jesus in 2014. We live in what military men call a target-rich environment.

So here is how I propose growing in our ability to hate properly. These are the areas I think we should all focus on: