I don’t hate them.
“I don’t hate them.” – We hear it all the time directed at whatever group of people may be the target of that hatred, and experienced in the rage, demeaning speech, demonizing, and violence that accompanies it. And we wonder, “How can they deny the hate other people experience through their words and actions?”
No single definition of hate exists. People do not share a single, simple understanding of what it means to hate. Is it more a feeling or an action? Not a binary choice, but more of one than the other. If I don’t “feel” like I hate someone, then do I? Or if someone says, “I hate you” – do they really?
People can hate without some nebulous feeling. They can hate without verbal acknowledgement. Hatred is experienced through behavior – public actions and words – that demeans and demonizes, displaying rage and violence toward other people, individually or in groups. The behavior, not the feeling or acknowledgement, determines and defines hatred.
For decades, I have said that love is action more than feeling, what we do more than what we say – demonstrated through our behavior, both words and actions. The same is true of hate. I can say that I love or that I don’t hate, but it’s what people experience from my behavior, my words and actions, that matters.
Many of us have learned that the impact and not the intent is most important in relationships. I may not intend harm to another person, but if the impact of what I said or did meant the person felt that I had harmed them, then that becomes the reality. I can say, “I didn’t mean it,” but those words do not lessen the harm caused in the moment.
My faith tradition is Christian, and the way I talk and write about life comes out of those teachings and scriptures. I’m confident that other faith and moral traditions share similar views based on different scriptures and teachings, but I will speak from my own.
What is the behavior of love? One summary describes what its behavior is and is not: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (1 Corinthians 13) Another saying goes to the core of what love means: “Love does no harm.” (Romans 13)
Is the opposite, then, not the behavior of hate? When people are unkind, boastful, self-seeking, easily angered, holding onto “wrongs” done, even delighting in evil? When people do harm to others? Not because we feel hateful or because we say, “I hate you,” but because our behavior causes harm.
Ending hate, if it were possible or as much as it may be possible, must focus on behavior, not feelings. I do not need to know what is in someone’s heart. I need only observe their behavior – what they say and do publicly – to discern the love or hatred of someone. Did one person experience another person’s behavior as causing harm? Demeaned, denigrated, demonized? Afraid and abused, angered by the harm experienced in that moment?
The energy and force of both hate and love can be seen in our world. Hate drives rage and fear and causes harm. Love drives out fear and rage and does no harm. We cannot end hate by focusing on whether we feel loving or hateful. We will not end hate by declaring that we choose love rather than hate. We begin to end hate by defining the behaviors that cause harm, then naming those behaviors as hate whenever we observe or experience their harm.
What do we do then? Define the behaviors that do not harm and engage in those behaviors, using the force of love to drive out fear and rage and end hate in the world around us, however small that may be.
Postscript: People with privilege and power who have engaged in the behaviors of hate that cause harm now push back on what love demands, claiming that they now are experiencing harm by their loss of privilege and power. In their world of rage and fear, they create even more harm. In our desire to end hate, we must “go deeper” into the force and energy of love’s behaviors - refusing to return harm for harm, hate for hate – engaging people still in the grip of hate with words and actions that will do no harm. They must choose themselves how they want to live.
