Hating Evil

Reading for Today: Proverb Chapter 8

Gold Nugget

Verse 13: “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.”

Commentary

There was an episode of 20/20 or Dateline, I’m not really sure which one, who put some actors in a public place to do studies on human behavior. One of the studies involved several teens in a park harassing and ganging up on another teen. It was amazing how many people passed by without attempting to defend the person being abused. Another involved a man being verbally abusive and threatening to a young lady that was obviously extremely scared. Again, people passed by without intervening. It was the rare individual that would be bold enough to get involved. Too many people do not take issue with horrible behavior. Some things should be such an offense to us that it stirs us into action. Unfortunately, where we should be offended, we are too often numb to evil behavior. If His Spirit is in us, we should be offended and take issue with evil. It may not mesh well with our modern teachings that are centered on tolerance and “love”, but we are to mimic the examples set before us in scripture. We are suckered into believing that Christians demonstrate love through tolerance. When we do have righteous anger towards evil, it is falsely labeled as hatred.

One day people may claim that their attraction to under-aged people is because of the way they are designed. They will claim that they were born that way and anyone that takes issue with them must not be a Christian, but instead are filled with hatred. Well, I say the latter part of that should be true. We should be filled with hatred of evil things. Today’s “gold nugget” says, “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil; Pride and arrogance and the evil way and the perverse mouth I hate.” Hate is a very strong word, but there are things that we should feel very strongly about and even against. The old saying applies here, Hate the sin and love the sinner. Although we should never be hateful to people, our feelings towards evil things should be so strong that hate would not be an inaccurate description of our position towards the deed and not the doer.

Prayer

Lord, it may cost us friends and popularity to stand up and take issue with sin, but the examples set before us in scripture does not seem to be concerned with how popular they would be. Help us to make our position towards evil behavior clear. In so doing, we shine the light on the lines between right and wrong. Amen

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