by Rya Joshi

Created on: November 03, 2009   Last Updated: November 05, 2009

No doubt! It is Christ who put hate in Christianity! Yes, it is he, who commanded his disciples to hate hatred. He commanded them to hate hatred by loving. Hating hatred was the first and foremost commandment given and taught by Jesus throughout his ministry.

Ten Points Showing How Christ Brought Hatred

1) A Promise of Hatred

Even in the beginning of creations, when humanity committed sin and was punished by God, hatred was promised. "I will make you enemies, you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel" (Genesis 3:15)

Hatred between two forces began to exist even in the beginning of creation.

2) Jesus Brought the Sword

Jesus himself has declared that he brought the sword. Do not think that I have come to establish peace on earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father and daughter against her mother; a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. (Matthew 10: 34-35)

3) Love brings Hatred

Love is not so easy. It needs refusal of selfishness. It needs sacrifice. It needs pain of heart. Jesus loved humanity so much that his body had to be torn into pieces and his blood to the last drop had to be shed to prove his matchless love. So do his followers.

4) To be a Christian is 'To be hated'

To be a Christian means 'to be hated' by the world. Jesus said, "If the world hates you, remember that the world hated me before you. This would not be so if you belonged to the world, because the world loves its own. But you are not of the world since I have chosen you from the world; because of this the world hates you." (John 15: 18-20)

5) Hatred in Christianity has a Special Meaning

Hatred in Christianity is against its own identity and nature of love. In the beginning of Christianity, the Christians lived such a life of love that it caused others envy then and sometimes hate them. When the Christians adopt hatred as their path, they pull themselves out of the ways of Christ. We can see throughout history the loving way of Christian life provokes unbearable hatred among jealous people.

6) It is Christians Who Bring Hatred into Christianity

It is the long gap between the principles and the practice. The scapegoats and sometimes the name-only-Christians evoke hatred in and out of Christianity with or without their own knowledge. Purely selfish motives betray Jesus Christ to treacherous claws of hatred.

7) Precept and Practice Must Go Together

The Christian

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