The Pacification of Christian Values (Chapter 1)

Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin
(Part #1)

                                

Today, there are many ancient clichés reemerging and once again inserting themselves into Christian worship as sacred truths.   Why did these clichés or axioms lie dormant for so many years only to reappear with such vigor that the values of Christianity are changed?  The axiom, "Love the sinner, hate the sin", is an abomination to some, but to others, it is a broad road to reconciliation and salvation.  The argument for or against is hard to persecute because both sides use the same source to validate their claim.   Often, what God said is a matter of interpretation. 

The different interpretations emulating from messengers of God is and has always been the basis of my dissent.   Proclaiming a new age Gospel while professing that God or his Word never changes creates a platform of deliberate confusion.  

Through the early years of Christianity, its mission has been to create a separation between the saint and the sinner.  

Although "Love the sinner, hate the sin", is a noble concept and is attributed to the teaching of Jesus, the truth according to numerous Bible scholars is Jesus never made the statement.  It might seem to parallel the teaching of Jesus, but it is from St. Augustine. His Letter 211 (c. 424) contains the phrase cum dilectione hominum et odio vitiorum, which translates roughly to "With love for mankind and hatred of sins." The phrase has become more famous as "love the sinner but hate the sin" or "hate the sin and not the sinner" (the latter form appearing in Mohandas Gandhi’s 1929 autobiography).  

What was it about these two leaders that caused them to defend their actions with such clever crafted Clichés? St. Augustine struggled with his sexuality and that of humanity, he deemed that sex in its post-Eden form was sinful.    He dramatizes the fear of sexual pleasure, by equating pleasure with perdition. Sadly to say he did it in such a way that anyone who tries to follow his logic would have the sense of being trapped in a never-ending nightmare".  Thus, the "attitude of the Catholic Church's celibate hierarchy is that the locus par excellence of sin is sex, a view based on Augustine's pleasure-hating fantasies".

Therefore, the phrase or cliché emerged with a sexual connotation, "With love for mankind and hatred of sins."   Mohandas Gandhi’s use of the phrase, "Love the sinner, hate the sin", was to justify his abnormal sexuality.  History supports the thesis that the use of the phrase even today carries a sexual connotation.  The re-emergence of the phrase in today's society is to justify the sinful nature of humanity.  

Clichés have a way of sneaking into our sub consciousness and thru a process of self-coding, they emerge as something profound and worthy of reflecting upon.  Call them Clichés, Truisms, rhymes or even crude remarks they are capable of improving or even perverting our thought process.     Many of the clichés we heard as a child lay dormant waiting for that moment to spring forth and replicate themselves in the mind of those we meet.  Often they are nothing more than cute phrases that tickle the ear and soothe the mind of the discontented.   In the early onset of emerging, nations and communities the use clichés or truisms as learning or indoctrination tools were commonplace.  

Often, speeches that the presenter considers worthy of the populace remembering are clichés filled.  Although bordering on embellishment, remember John F. Kennedy's famous speech. "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." 

My grandmother used numerous clichés to teach me objectivity lessons.   Among her favorite were, "It is the early bird that gets the worm", and "You can't have your cake and eat it too."  Both of these statements drove her point home, but one afternoon while plowing my mother's garden I began to question the early bird concept, there were variables that created inconsistencies.  Even today, I still find myself wondering; why a cake is not a cake once you eat it.

The use of clichés or truisms in a religious setting often promotes a sublime intent to deflect or detract from or even shape the word of God.  When a Bible truth is reduced to a Cliché the values of Christianity suffers.  Clichés maintain the innate ability to cross the line between teaching and indoctrination in a veiled manner.  A cute phrase can create a point of reflection such as, "One monkey doesn't stop the show", or a point of action such as, "Love the sinner, and hate the sin". 

Where did the phrase, "Love the sinner, hate the sin", come from?   To most, the answer is simple; it is the teaching of Jesus.   On any given Sunday, thousands of preachers will stand before their congregation and proclaim that these are the word of Jesus.  Many of those hearing those words will believe because if we do not show love they will hate us.   If we do not show love they will not come to our churches, thus our bottom line will suffer.  The organized church has decided that in order to remain relevant in a pessimist society it must dumb down its rhetoric in the face of it an adversary.   Imagine the howls of the wolves if one would proclaim from the pulpit or national television, "Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?" (Matthew 23:33)   The political correctness police would descend upon the interloper, shaming the pastor and the church into compliance.

Shaming has evolved into an art form.  It has morphed into something sinister from the days when one kid would say to the other, "Your mother wear cowboy boots".  Usually, a fight would erupt and afterward they would usually leave the playground as friends unless an adult intervened.   In today's society new and potent words are created and the rush to provide the proper definition and narrative is courted by the media.  The list includes words like racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic, you name it.  These words are used to bring shame upon the person that they are being applied to.  Call a person one of these words and the result is similar to saying to the person you have body odor.  Whether it is true or not the person is affected.

I was in a Sunday school when I first heard the words, "love the sinner, hate the sin".  To put things in the proper perspective, it was the Sunday after the Supreme Court validated the President's alternate lifestyle agenda.  My world, based on the Holy Spirit led common sense and the Bible entered into a state of turmoil.  The Sunday school teacher took an ample amount of time explaining what I considered a new concept of Christian values.   The morning sermon was also based upon love and the pastor made a feeble attempt to explain how and why we were supposed to love the sinner, and hate the sin.  The government's re-indoctrination of Christian values was in full play.  I left the church that day one very confused soul.  

The reason Christians have begun to spout these phrases and clichés as if they were God inspired scripture is a part of the process of justifying sin.  Now that sin has been justified by the government, the populace is facing cultural crises, church crises, and family crises.   These crises have torn our communities and cities apart and now they are on the verge of destroying the very nation that spawned them.  As marriage equality gained support, the traditional church and Christianity found itself in a dilemma.  How do the churches attract people in a society that have turned its back on God?  Traditional churches are becoming empty and many churchgoers are wonders where it will end.     

Two statements in the above paragraph are not scriptural.  The founding of the church was not to attract people to Christ, and Christians who study the Word of God know how this is going to end.  

Most learned Bible scholars would have us to believe that Jesus actually said, "Love the sinner, and hate the sin."  Lest of all, we are indoctrinated into a belief that he would be on board with this 'simple truth'.  Why would he not be?  The adage supports universal love.  We take the catchphrase from Mahatma Gandhi who morphed it from Augustine's, "With love for mankind and hatred of sins",  not because we agree with everything Mahatma Gandhi said, but because he conveniently said, “Hate the sin and not the sinner.”

The problem with Mahatma Gandhi statement, “Hate the sin, not the sinner” is, there is nothing in the Word of God to validate the statement.  The question that it does present is how does humanity separate sin from a sinner?  Now, the use of the word sinner can be misconstruction as hate speech and to make such an assessment is of a person's nature is judging.  We are told that we are not to judge yet, every day we make judgment calls, whether it is the refusal to hire a person because of his history or calling a person names because they do not agree with modernist views.  Modern day Christians have allowed themselves to be backed into a rabbit hole and are asked to perform the impossible.  The Bible makes a clear distinction between the righteous and the sinner.  (1^st Peter 4:18) Paul's message to the Corinthians was as such, "Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. (2^nd Corinthians 6:17).  There has never been a greater miss-characterization of the heart of Jesus or a more egregious bastardization of the Bible than proclaiming those words to be the Word of God. 

The damage that has done to Christian values and to the public perception of Christianity may never be fully repaired before Christ return.   Based upon the testimony of Jesus in the book of Revelation, It is an embarrassment; a sin and a total abomination what the organized church have morphed into.  In my book, "The Evolution of a Failed Church", I take great care in explaining the difference between the organized church and the spiritual church.   The hijacking and backpedaling of Christian values did not take place overnight; it began when Christians grew weary of persecution under the rule of the Roman Empire.

Continues in (Part 2)