Proverbial Wisdom on Hate

What do Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, and Proverbs agree on?

The great moral crisis of our time is not, as many of my fellow Christians believe, sexual licentiousness, but rather vindictiveness.

-Alan Jacobs

Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs.

Proverbs 10:12

Did you see the Super Bowl ad with Snoop Dogg and Tom Brady? Playacting, they go back and forth giving rationales for hating each other. Then the screen goes blank except for these wise words:

The reasons for hate are as stupid as they sound.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I want to draw your attention to the word stupid.

Stupid could be a loose translation of what the Book of Proverbs means by foolish or unwise. To get in the Proverbial mindset, don’t think of an angry person yelling, “You idiot!” Rather, think of a trusted, beloved teacher or mentor showing you the wise versus unwise/foolish (stupid) way of doing something. It is wise to shut off the power when working with electricity. It is foolish to drink and drive. Speaking such truths are acts of revelatory love.

The Impracticality of Hate

Proverbial love is relentlessly practical. A Proverb functions something like lab work, pointing out the various places in our lives that are abnormal. Yet, Proverbs are not impersonal. They work on persons, seeking to educate, to make wise, to motivate us toward different behavior rooted in wisdom. They never intend to shame or demean—as might be inferred in the word stupid.

This is what the Wisdom Writer is doing with our text: “Hey, humans, if you keep despising each other, you will live with never-ending battles in all your various personal, social, and civic relations.”

One doesn’t have to be a brilliant sociologist to see that life, on every relational level, and in most any social/civic setting is an ever-growing, roaring fire of conflict—a fire stoked by the winds of unkindness. We need some Proverbial wisdom.

Proverbs 10:12 arises in a section of the book, according to John Goldingay, that seeks to differentiate and contrast faithful (righteous) and faithless (wicked) actions. The assertion of Proverbs is that faithful/wise actions lead to a full, fulfilled, protected, appreciated, and secure life. In contrast, faithless/wicked actions lead to a frustrated, disappointed, despised, vulnerable, and fearful life.

In Proverbs, hate refers to any act or word of hostility. It names the public manifestation of one’s inner being, the hidden inner willingness or the readiness to do harm to another person. This is what hate intends: damage or destruction of another person. The unintended consequences: damage or destruction to oneself. Consequently, it is a no-brainer that hate stirs up conflict—producing never-ending cycles of violence. This not only happens in interpersonal relations but, sadly, world political leaders manifest and model hate and revenge: “If you do so-and-so, we will retaliate even harder…we will make the lives of your people miserable…we will wipe you off the map.”

A political and personal alternative is available to us: love.

In the heart of God, baked into his creation, and perfectly modeled in Jesus is a fundamental Christian ethic: love is more powerful than hate or revenge. Love, covering wrongs, leads to the flourishing of our souls and our social selves, our interactions with others.

How does love cover wrongs? Love first breaks the cycle of violence and then love heals and restores that which is shattered. Love seeks the good of its enemies. Often, such intention does not yield perfect results. But even if loving actions are imperfect, they are miles away from hate or revenge. Love plants and waters the seeds of reconciliation and peace. The full plant of love might not emerge immediately but at least seeds of hate were not planted. Then, we can rest in the promise that love, somehow, never fails (1 Cor. 13:8).

Overflowing with love or hate?

Acts of love are the overflow of one’s heart. For instance, Jesus’ teaching that we should not murder is rooted in the wisdom that we should not even allow room for hate in our hearts. Rather, we are to cultivate the virtue of love in our hearts so that the instinct to harm others, especially to the point of murder, is never an option for dealing with a situation. Murder cannot overflow from our hearts when hate is forbidden entry and love is nurtured instead.

Our emotions are spontaneous and involuntary, so hate may flare up. This is part of the spiritual warfare that exists in our minds and hearts. When hate intrudes on our desire to follow the model of Jesus we “take that thought captive to Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). That is, we immediately begin to surrender the feeling of hate to the supremacy of Jesus and his teaching–thereby restraining deeds of retaliation and hate.

Faithfulness to the wisdom of Jesus leads to righteous words and deeds of neighborliness—to loving our neighbor and importantly, to loving our enemy. Love aims at true peace, and true peace sometimes brings conflict and pain. But this kind of conflict and pain which moves out of love and toward peace is fundamentally different from hateful hostility. Love is the fruit of wisdom, while hate is the proverbial definition of foolishness.