3336) If I’m honest, there are very few things I hate. There are many things that irritate me, but to put them in the category of hatred would be a stretch. Of those few things I do hate, they would include students treating each other with cruelty. I also hate hearing parents yell at the referees and their own kids from the bleachers at basketball games. Finally, I hate how I act and react sometimes. That statement holds a lot within it.

Considering this, because I am not continually saturated in hate, it’s easy to spot it in others. To watch our politicians on all sides speak and act in hate. To hear the bitterness in an adult’s words, wishing ill on someone who has wronged them. To watch someone fester with hatred because of how someone else has treated them, even when this person deserves the hatred, it makes me sad.  

Paul tells us in Titus 3:3 that he has put away hatred. He knew it destroys the hater. It is like an infected sore that progressively gets worse. Paul also knew that seeing the object of his hatred getting what they deserved will not satisfy this need for so-called justice.

Hatred is a choice whose consequences are just as bad, if not worse, for the one who hates.