{"id":1232,"date":"2012-06-18T14:11:51","date_gmt":"2012-06-18T18:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phoenixandolivebranch.wordpress.com\/?p=1232"},"modified":"2014-07-03T11:27:33","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T15:27:33","slug":"hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner-a-christian-myth-in-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/phoenixandolivebranch\/2012\/06\/hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner-a-christian-myth-in-perspective\/","title":{"rendered":"“Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner” – a Christian Myth in Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I recently wrote my Christian<\/a> Fundamentalist<\/a> Homophobia<\/a> series<\/a> to point out how I and other fundamentalist children were taught to feel contempt and disgust for people who didn\u2019t live up to our artificial standards. We were taught to separate people from their self-expression, as though they were somehow trapped in an impregnable cocoon and all we could actually\u00a0see<\/em> was the demon that controlled them. In other words, we hated everything about them but loved a vague idea in our minds of the \u201csaved\u201d person the sinner could become \u2013 you know, someone who didn\u2019t actually exist. Someone we made up.<\/p>\n

My conclusion to the series was this:<\/p>\n

Unconditional love does not mean loving someone while disapproving of their actions. It means forsaking the right to disapprove.\u00a0You cannot love who I am and hate what I do. What I do shows you who I am.\u00a0If you choose to love a figment of your imagination, some idea of who I might become, then you love only your own mind, and what you hate is me.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Melissa<\/strong> at Permission to Live<\/a> and Katy-Anne Wilson<\/strong> at American N Aussie<\/a> have both written posts that address this, too. Each writes from a different perspective: one religious, one social. Excerpts below:<\/p>\n

\u201cLove the Sinner, Hate the Sin\u201d<\/a> by Katy-Anne<\/p>\n

I also think that \u201clove the sinner but hate the sin\u201d is hypocrisy because often, we hate somebody else\u2019s sin and yet we fail to hate our own. We would be better served hating our own sin and working on correcting our own sins than worrying about the sins of someone else. It is easy for me to judge someone for struggling with sins that I don\u2019t struggle with, but I\u2019m often far more sympathetic of those that struggle with the same sins I do than those that struggle with other sins, and that\u2019s wrong.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner?<\/a> by Melissa<\/p>\n

I grew up with people who claimed they didn\u2019t hate anyone (remember? They \u201clove\u201d sinners.) I even claimed to \u201clove sinners\u00a0while\u00a0hating their\u00a0sin\u201d myself once upon a time. I understood tolerance to mean extreme distaste and dislike and disapproval, coupled with an ability to refrain oneself from violence towards the person you felt that way about. I felt that acceptance better expressed an ability to disagree, but be OK with that person living their own life.<\/em>\u00a0In reality, The definition for the term Tolerance is:<\/em>\u00a0\u201cA\u00a0fair, objective, and permissive attitude toward opinions and practices that differ from one\u2019s own.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This term encompasses perfectly\u00a0what I am asking from people who do not agree with the reality of LGBTQ persons, and\/or the exact ways they may choose to live their lives. Being willing to hear another person, seek to be fair and objective and impartial, is exactly what I meant to say by using the term \u201cAcceptance\u201d\u2026. Many people who claim to be tolerant think that minorities should feel grateful that they are not being hung in the town square. They make no bones about the fact that they \u201cHate the sin.\u201d And the \u201clove the sinner\u201d begins to sound more like \u201cdon\u2019t kill the sinner\u201d.\u00a0This is not tolerance.\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently wrote my Christian Fundamentalist Homophobia series to point out how I and other fundamentalist children were taught to feel contempt and disgust for people who didn\u2019t live up to our artificial standards. We were taught to separate people from their self-expression, as though they were somehow trapped in an impregnable cocoon and all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,16],"tags":[40,129,225,951,259,261,296,298,322,328,333,342,955,956,381,513,559,621],"class_list":["post-1232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lgbtq-issues","category-love","tag-acceptance","tag-christian-culture","tag-ex-fundamentalists","tag-fear","tag-fundamentalism","tag-fundamentalist-christianity","tag-hate-the-sin","tag-hatred","tag-homophobia","tag-humility","tag-hypocrisy","tag-intolerance","tag-lgbtq-issues","tag-love","tag-love-the-sinner","tag-religion","tag-sin","tag-tolerance"],"yoast_head":"\n"Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner" - a Christian Myth in Perspective<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I recently wrote my Christian Fundamentalist Homophobia series to point out how I and other fundamentalist children were taught to feel contempt and\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/phoenixandolivebranch\/2012\/06\/hate-the-sin-love-the-sinner-a-christian-myth-in-perspective\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\""Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner" - 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