We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. Albert Einstein
Hate is a luxury, exacting its own form of hyper-inflationary costs, that we can no longer afford. Hate fits this definition of a luxury: a foolish or worthless form of self-indulgence. Just ask those parents who lost their kids this last week at Covenant School in Nashville. They lost their most precious possession – the most unbearable of costs – from someone indulging in their own hate. No better season than this one to reexamine the cost of our hate and to seek a higher level of thinking.
The hate just keeps on coming. This week as former President Trump was arraigned on a felony indictment, the exorbitant escalation of hate between the pro- versus anti-Trumpers moves our country further down the road of costly chaos and dysfunction. Like the victims in Nashville, whether you are in the fight or on the sideline, we all pay the inflated price.
Holy Week is a time when Christians remember the hate that lead to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And two thousand years later hate-filled mobs still persecute and kill in the name of ‘righteous’ causes. The killer in Nashville left a manifesto – still not released – that probably advocates for the rightness of her cause and the wrongness of an opposition she feels victimized by.
Counting the Cost of Hate
Virtually none of us are in favor of hate – in fact, most of hate – hate. Yet as much as we all deplore what just happened in Nashville and all the other hate-filled episodes that dominate today’s society, the odds are that our debates over assault rifles, mental health, gender identity, red flag laws, stronger law enforcement, social media, stricter laws, more aggressive prosecutions and sentencing – will only add to the hate. Reminds me of that image of a very angry person shouting: “Stop doing good that way, do it my way!” The more we demand others conform to our views and the more we hate those who don’t, the more we feed hate. If we are going to raise our game when it comes to hating, we need to more thoroughly count the costs that come from righteous hate. Let me suggest six:
1. Hate righteously demands rights: Hate comes from a place of self-righteousness – not humility – that then demands certain rights. The right to ignore and exclude, the right to make the other invisible, to hurt and to destroy. It is when we decide that we are better than another that we then accrue the right to treat them as less. Hate is hierarchical, which then legitimizes the use of power – in the name of right – to oppress those who are wrong.
Our culture wars – yes, we use the term ‘war’ – are really about each righteous side attempting to exercise power over the other in the name of being right. Honestly, how many of us deep down hoped the Nashville killing would involve an assault rifle, or a shooter that would be a left- or right-wing extremist so we could say, “see, I told you so.” The power-source for hate is to prove ‘rightness’ – based on some higher purpose such as equality, Biblical authority, human rights. It legitimizes the power to condemn, shout-down, burn-down, destroy. The January 6 attack on the capital, the destructive George Floyd riots and the Nashville school killer – shared the common belief they were so right and so victimized about something, and those they opposed were so wrong, that it justified taking action. Yet, those rights came at a price to those who lost their property, their lives and to an increasingly polarized country.
2. Hate aimed at your enemies splatters others – inflicting collateral damage. One of the reasons hate is so costly is that it hits others and often boomerangs hitting those you love, eventually hitting you. It is very much like those drive-by shootings that often occur in gang warfare – where the intended target is missed and innocent children and adults are killed. The shootings in Nashville will be a defining event for each one splattered including all the kids and staff and in some way for all of us.
When there is hate within a family – between siblings, parents, cousins – the collateral damage affects every plan, activity and interaction. The amount of costly time and effort spent trying to anticipate, arrange and smooth-over the animus is exhausting and often simply leads the family members to withdraw from interactions – contaminating each member.
3. No matter how damaged you are by others, hate will make it worse. Hate, like unpaid taxes, does not live ‘rent-free’ in our head and heart, they accrue usurious and compounding interest and penalties. As Anne Lamott has famously said, hate is like drinking rat poison and waiting on the rat to die.
Deciding not to hate is the one decision, albeit difficult in the midst of all the pain, that we have control over.
4. Hate is Covid-like contagious. Hate is spread socially as haters attempt to enlist others in proclaiming their own righteousness and others’ evil. Many in their circle may resist the dis-ease but there are always those who succumb to the hate and become a part of the spread. Hate, aided by today’s prolific social media, becomes like a run on a bank – not unlike Silicon Valley Bank. It only takes a small percentage of haters to create a stampede of action and reaction that affects everyone.
Unfortunately, the cost of the spread is not random. As my friend Michael says, “when the sh-t hits the fan, it is not evenly distributed.” Hate is catnip for those prone to rage, conspiracies and certain forms of mental illness who are particularly vulnerable and ultimately dangerous. The Nashville shooter was under a doctor’s care for a mental disorder and left behind a “manifesto”.
5. Hate distorts: Hate becomes a dis-eased covering of the eyes that distorts everything in sight. As the ultimate confirmation bias, this ‘hate-filled lens’ magnifies everything negative and minimizes or makes invisible, everything positive – that is the object of its hate.
To paint every single intention and action as evil or bad requires an incredible leap of distorted faith. And, while none of us has marched into a school to kill innocent children, when we let our hate dominate our view of another, systematically discarding every positive quality and viewing them as less than human – less loved by God – we are traveling in their orbit.
6. Hate peels off residual pain of old wounds. Hate is often a form of residue from old wounds. We all know what it is like when the actions of another peels the scab off an old hurt. Maybe we were left out, manipulated, lied to or otherwise hurt earlier in our life and a now another replicates the pain. However, it is not a new pain, it is additive and cumulative to an old one. And our response is to hate and blame.
Hate and blame are mainly unprocessed pain that gets greatly magnified when repeated in self-indulgence. Brene Brown says, here is what we know from the research, “Blame is simply the discharging of discomfort and pain. It is the opposite of accountability.” Who knows what pain the shooter in Nashville has endured. Yet it is our responsibility to own and address our old wounds and scars. When we are unable to do that, we run the risk of being a ‘carrier’ that inflicts untold cost on others.
Love That Rises Above Hate
So, if most of us whole-downheartedly oppose hate and its attendant costs, how come it seems to increasingly dominate our society? Hate has its use, surely there are any number of things that warrant hate – deaths from Fentanyl, racism, assault. It can be a useful servant but when it rules our interests and emotions it becomes a terrible master. If Einstein is right, we cannot solve the problem of hate with more hate.
What is that higher level above hate? Is it love? Love is such a powerful force; yet, what we most love makes us most vulnerable to ‘hate.’ When we love a cause – diversity, border security, religious belief, inclusion, freedom, safety – we are tempted to hate and blame anyone or anything that puts that love at risk. Love of something or someone is often at the root of hate. It is a brand of love we can no longer afford.
How do we get the benefit of love without incurring the cost of the other side of the coin – hate? Hate does not need to be combated; it needs to be starved. How do we starve hate? In a word: grace. Grace is simply unearned favor.
Remember over a decade ago when a young gunman barricaded himself inside a one-room Amish school house near Lancaster, Pennsylvania killing five children, injuring five others before killing himself. The gunman’s mother Terri Roberts shared with NPR the anguish of finding out that the shooter was her son. But, it is what she recalls next that is jolting:
That week the Robertses had a private funeral for their son, when they went to the gravesite, there they saw as many as 40 Amish start coming from around the side of the graveyard, surrounding them like a cresent. “Love just emanated from them,” Terri says. “I do recall the fathers saying, ‘I believe that I have forgiven,’ but there are some days that I question that.”
Terri says she finds it hard to accept forgiveness when she thinks of Rosanna, the most injured of the survivors. “Rosanna’s the most injured of the survivors,” she explains. “Her injuries were to her head. She is now 15, still tube-fed and in a wheelchair. And she does have seizures, and when it gets to be this time of year, as we get closer to the anniversary date, she seizes more. And it’s certainly not the life that this little girl should have lived.”
Terri asked if it would be possible for her to help with Rosanna once a week. “I read to her, I bathe her, dry her hair,” says Terri, who herself is battling cancer.
That is the relational way of grace. Grace, that sounds soft but is hard-as-nails, is not just for the recipient; it is also for the one who offers it. And, it can be infectiously contagious.
In this season of Holy Week, Christians celebrate the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. According to Luke’s narrative, something very important happened, after he was hung on the cross and before his resurrection. Christ uttered these words, “Father forgive them…” The offering of grace came after the beatings but before the Resurrection. Grace enables rising.
That is the kind of love we all need. It starts not with demanding of others but of offering ourselves. Accountable love starves hate rather than indulging it, by offering grace: for the killer in Nashville, Donald Trump, his haters and for our enemies. That’s the sequence: after anguish but before rising, comes grace.
This article is included with the kind permission of Robert Hall. Original article can be found here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hate-luxury-we-can-longer-afford-robert-hall/
Robert’s latest book, “This Land of Strangers: The Relationship Crisis That Imperils Home, Work, Politics and Faith,” is now in paperback. A “recovering CEO,” he has authored 200 published articles and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Forbes, The Huffington Post, The CEO Magazine. His website: www.robertehall.com