Five Ways to Eradicate Hate

Let's make room for love.

Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all sins.

Proverbs 10:12

Hate seems like a powerful change agent. It exhibits how strongly we feel about something. It knocks people off balance allowing us to win shoving matches. In our divisive social discourse, it is a powerful way to express to people how completely we condemn and reject them.

Powerful like a social atom bomb.

Who wants to see one of those used ever again?

Love seems weak, something like what grandmothers show to grandkids. Love is not tough enough for the rough and tumble of Earth-2025. So, the teeth of the grinding wheels of hate continue to crush the world, leaving us searching for…

Love Divine, unconditional, a reliable lifeline.

Who wants the experience of being loved?

When we are wrong about theology, politics, economics, history, social theory, or medical philosophy, God loves us unshakably. This love is neither enablement nor abandonment. Divine love, with its deep sense of security and belonging, is the means by which God brings humanity to his intended purposes—working with us where we are, not where he wishes we were.

God’s kind of love is active in its pursuit of the right, true, good, and beautiful. God’s kind of love does not stop talking or take the ball and go home, abandoning the playing field to human destruction.

What if God’s kind of love is actually true? What if God’s kind of love is stronger than hate, or destruction, or even death? What if God’s kind of love is meant for us and also meant to be poured out through us? What if God’s love, displayed through those who love him, is strong enough to mend the world? What would that look like right now?

I’ll bet your observations mirror mine: Harsh words, mean memes, nasty reels, and crude Tic Tok videos do not seem to be ramps to higher levels of understanding, peace, and love. There are wise ways of engaging with division and social brokenness out of love for God and love for others.

What if the church led the way into an alternative way of being?

How might we eradicate hate and practice love?

Here are five ideas of how we might accomplish such big goals—and the order matters.

1. Drive out the mocker–in our own hearts. Our inclination is often to see others as the problem. But what if we made it a goal of our transformation into Christlikeness to silence the mocker that lives in our own hearts in favor of the life of the Spirit: love, peace, kindness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5:22-23)?

Drive out the mocker, and out goes strife; quarrels and insults are ended.

Proverbs 22:10

Then “the ridiculer” of our own hearts who shows contempt for others and “the caricaturist” who belittles others would wither and die. God’s kingdom would be visible in our own lives. Interpersonal relationships would heal. Only with this kind of personal transformation can we turn and love others with God’s strong love.

2. Listen. The whole vibe of our cultural moment would radically change if we would practice curious, open-minded listening.

For he who gives an answer before he hears, it is folly and shame to him.

Proverbs 18:13

3. Don’t assume you have to speak. Our social discourse needs discernment about when to speak and what to say and how to convey it. To start, just stop before you speak and ask the question: Will words be helpful here? If so, which ones? We’ve all seen this to be true:

A quarrelsome man is for kindling strife but where there is no wood, the fire goes out; and where there is no whisperer, strife ceases.

Proverbs 26:20-21

4. If you speak, speak with gentleness. Only when we know a person by really listening to their story or ideas, their background, and their heart and mind, can we offer gentle and redemptive words that reduce rather than inflame conflict.

A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but the slow-to-anger calms a dispute.

Proverbs 19:11

A gentle answer turns away wrath, while a harsh word stirs up anger.

Proverbs 15:18

5. Attend to the consequences of our words. Much of the world is in a torture chamber built by decades of believing that feeling strongly enough about something justifies using un-Christlike words to get our way. Families, friendships, board rooms, and PTA meetings increasingly experience this reality:

A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city, and contentions are like the bars of a citadel.

Proverbs 18:19

Do you feel stirred up with hatred? Do you recognize the feelings and behaviors of hatred in your social circles? Can we find a way to move away from the inherent bitterness, fear, and feelings of superiority that hatred causes in our own hearts and relationships and work instead to cultivate love—the bent of our heart to seek the good of others? Love will banish hatred and will give us the capacity to engage well with the struggles that remain in daily life.