Hating What God Hates

It's interesting to be posting in the middle of a hotel lobby this morning. How amazing that there are many places in the world where I'd be jailed if I attempted to read scripture and write about it publicly.

How can something completely false generate such rabid persecution? You simply don't see people being killed for believing in astrology and reading tea leaves. Those things are too silly.

On the other hand, witchcraft is specifically listed in the Bible, and that has generated significant persecution in the past.

Satan is shrewd and makes use of the popular ideas of the day. These days, humanism and materialism are more popular than external forms of Christianity.

Do Christians today hate the same things that God would hate?

For instance, I think that God hates the number of people in the US who live in poverty. But most conservative Christians take the view that it's "their fault" and costs to serve the poor shouldn't fall to the public. That's exactly the opposite of God's plan in the Old Testament and New Testament. See, in particular, Deuteronomy 15, in which God tells the Israelites that there should be no poor among them because of the rich blessing they'll receive.

We should have this same generous spirit in our own day.

Of course Paul writes in 2 Thessalonians 3 that a man must work or he shouldn't eat. But Jesus acknowledges in Mark 14 that we'll always have the poor with us and that we can help them anytime. He is quoting Deuteronomy here, and this is not a coincidence.

We should continue the spirit of giving outlined in Deuteronomy 15, even after Jesus' resurrection. This expectation hasn't changed.

In 1 John 2, John reminds us not to love the world. This is a polite way of saying "hate the world." This means to hate the illusions of money, sex, and power for their own sake.

Do I hate these things? Not always. How about you, dear Reader?