There are six things the Lord hates, seven that are detestable to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked schemes, feet that are quick to rush into evil, a false witness who pours out lies and a person who stirs up conflict in the community. Proverbs 6:16-19

We all embrace the revelation that God is love. We focus on that in our sermons, in our group, in our books, and especially in our evangelism. We should focus on love because it is the greatest gift and most defining thing about our God. We focus on that truth so much that it sounds almost sacreligious to talk about God hating anyone or anything. The truth is, however, that scripture talks about God hating things in numerous places. The proverb quoted above is one of those texts. The original language means hate in the same sense that we mean hate – an intense disliking, a strong aversion, a strong rejection of, etc.

God hates these things because they are contrary to his nature and are contrary to love. He hates these things because they are destructive. I don’t want to go into a discussion of each of the items God hates, but I want to very briefly remind us that if we are going to be godly (God-like) we must not only love what he loves, but hate what he hates. We must have a strong aversion, an intense dislike, and a steadfast rejection of the same things that God rejects.

Our challenge is we live in a culture that preaches tolerance as if tolerance is the only virtue. We live in a culture that defines any opposition to any kind of lifestyle as hate speech. We live in a culture that has taken the idea of sinful behaviors or evil thoughts and has morphed it into the idea of being a disease (that someone has no control over) or simply an alternative lifestyle that you don’t have to adopt but you must accept others who adopt it without objection. This is the cultural moment where we begin to declare that good things are bad and bad things are good. In our culture, we are very close to the point where the only sin is standing up for a righteous standard. We have come to a place in some parts of America and Canada where simply reading passages of scripture in church can now be defined as hate speech and can be cause for criminal prosecution.

In a culture that pressures us to give up the notion of absolute truth (versus personal truth) and that pressures us to accept nearly any kind of deviant behavior, it is easy for us to become “tolerant” too. Instead of being offended or shocked by certain behaviors or instead of hating the behavior and calling it sin, we may simply take on an attitude that the behavior is distasteful or personally offensive. Once we start down that road, we lose our moral compass. Instead of certain behaviors being absolutely right or wrong, sinful or righteous, we step into a world of all gray where black and white no longer exist. We step into a world of personal preference or taste versus a world where God has clearly spoken and drawn lines between good and evil.

When we no longer feel any kind of indignation or anger toward the very things that God hates, we have begun to let our godliness slip away. When we find ourselves no longer offended by certain behaviors which culture approves, we know the constant drumbeat of sin around us has dulled our spiritual sensitivities. Like those who live next to railroad tracks, we learn to tune out the noise and the sin so that we no longer notice it. When we no longer speak out against these things as being wrong and intolerable, our hearts become “out-of-sync” with God’s heart. I’m not talking about hating people, but behaviors, because these will ultimately lead to the destruction of the individuals who practice them and the destruction of nations that tolerate them. Most of us would say we hate cancer, especially if we have lost loved ones to its diabolical destruction of the body. We should hate the things that God hates with the same perspective because these things will also destroy.

The danger for most of us as believers, is that we simply lose our sensitivity to sin because we are surrounded by it day after day. It is normalized, it is celebrated, it is ignored, and it is approved of 24 hours a day on television and social media. It is hip. it is cool. It is the new morality. If you speak the truth about these things you will quickly be branded a hater, locked up in Facebook jail, and silenced at every opportunity. The prophets of Israel faced the same opposition when they spoke God’s truth and were actually blamed for all of Israel’s woes.

Elijah had such an encounter with Ahab, probably the most wicked king in Israel’s history. “Ahab went to meet Elijah. When he saw Elijah, he said to him, “Is that you, you troubler of Israel?” “I have not made trouble for Israel,” Elijah replied. “But you and your father’s family have. You have abandoned the Lord’s commands and have followed the Baals” (1 Kings 18:16-18). The judgments of God kept hammering Israel and the wicked blamed the righteous for all their calamities. It will be no different in our time. And yet, we must continue to hate what God hates without hating the people trapped in sin and deception. We must speak the truth to them and our culture in love..

I believe we must give some thought to our desensitization to sin so that we don’t become indifferent to sin rather than hating it. We have to watch our intake of television programs, movies, and social media where vulgar language, nudity, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, witchcraft, etc. are standard fare. These are things God hates. We feel as if we are unaffected by watching these thing because we don’t practice them. I think, however, if we are honest we are no longer repulsed by these things as we once were or we wouldn’t continue to watch them night after night. If we are honest, we disapprove but can we say we hate these things?

Perhaps, our prayers need to include a constant request that the Holy Spirit would once again restore our sensitivity to sin, our indignation towards those who promote such things, and our voice that pushes back on cultural norms that invite death and judgment. Of course, We should also ask God to teach us to love what he loves even more. As followers of Jesus, we must not only be lovers but haters as well…not of people, but of the sin that destroys people and nations. Lord will you match our hearts to yours so that we love what you love and hate what you hate.