I was thinking about certain people that I have talked with and they seem to think that if you disagree with another’s lifestyle then you hate them. Not true. Disagreement is not hate. Because of the days that we are living in I believe that is an important point to make. You can disagree with a person’s lifestyle and not hate the person. You can easily hate what he does because it is destroying his life and/or others and not hate him. To use an illustration, if I say rape is wrong and you say rape is right then we are not both correct nor do we hate each other. One is right and the other is wrong. Hate does not even come into the picture. Common sense and seeing the fruit or results of the act can tell us if it is right or wrong. Does it help relationships or destroy them? If one is getting fulfillment and the other isn’t, or even if both parties are getting fulfillment, is it right? Is right determined on what a person feels like at the time?

There is a difference in hating what a person does and hating the person, a big difference. I can hate being lied to or stolen from but not hate the person. That person could be starving or deceived and believes that he has to do what he is doing to get by. A society cannot continue if wrong flourishes within it. It has been seen by history over and over that a country falls when it goes morally wrong. When it doesn’t deal with wrong behavior. Think for a minute. How long would this society stand if it ceased to judge criminal activities? If fornicators, adulterers, homosexuals continued on with their lifestyles? In a short time sexual diseases would be running rampant.

If thieves, murderers, cheaters continued on with their lifestyles? The innocent would be broke, dead, and/or deceived. Those practicing this form of behavior would be doing it to each other pretty soon since they would be the only ones left and hence society would be destroyed. “Righteousness exalteth a nation but sin is a reproach to any people:” (Proverbs 14:34)

Is there a higher law at work within telling us right and wrong? Is it innately known? Do we have some sort of law written within our being that tells us certain things? And if so why and where does it come from? There are acts that most seem to agree on in knowing that they wrong, degrading, evil, etc. Things such as abortion, or other forms of murder, stealing seems to be another form of aberrant behavior, even lying and cheating don’t go over well with the law or feeling within us. We know that it is wrong but why is it wrong?

God created mankind with a conscience to know right and wrong so they could survive as a people but as mankind goes deeper into sin, this sense of right and wrong gets corrupted, deformed or confused. It is no longer a good measuring rod to measure with so others have to decide for that person since he or she has gone too far into evil things that evil doesn’t seem that evil anymore. That is a pattern in the past for nations that fell and it is the same truth for nations today. And when the others over a nation go into the same form of thought patterns then that nation will crumble from within. The bible talks about a time when evil is good and good is evil. It looks like we are almost there again. So hate, greed, malice, fear, corruption sets in and mankind will cease to be in those areas that this lifestyle is practiced.

Finally we deal with questions of private concern. Do you hate the person that you disagree with or do you just hate his views on the particular subject that you are dealing with? Can you hate the person that you disagree with? Sure you can! But you can also love the person that you disagree with since they don’t necessarily have anything in common. More than likely, you would probably love the person that you disagree with rather than hate him. A person hating another person won’t normally speak up when the other person is doing something that could cause hurt to himself, or confusion, etc. since he hates him. He could care less about his situation. Hate or love is a decision that you make in basically the same way that you make a decision to agree or disagree with someone. But those decisions are decided upon in many different ways such as the person’s attitude, his make-up or mindset, his personality, his focus, his desire for certain end results, etc.

The bible tells us that we are to trust in the Lord with all of our heart and not lean unto our own understanding (Check Proverbs 3:5,6). The days are getting darker as time goes on. We who are Christians must shine the light of Jesus so that the world can see the way that they are to go.