By: Larry Young
As a young person, I discovered that harboring hatred for just one person destroyed my ability to truly love any other person. So I turned away from hatred and it changed my life. By the late 1990’s, I was inspired to write and publish an article about my struggle with hatred for The Gleaner: “Hate Casteth Out All Love”. I learned that the longer I hated, the more intense my
hatred became… including the anger. I actually grew to enjoy the feelings of hatred, and I would secretly act out against those I hated behind closed doors and make them “pay”. I finally realized that my hatred was only destroying me, not the person I hated. I also realized my ability to genuinely love others was being destroyed. So I simply turned away from harboring that hatred and refused to go there ever again… then my whole perspective changed, and my ability to love others returned, with benefits in ways I hadn’t thought possible.
In 2025, we are now witnessing a renewed explosion of hatred on both a national and global scale that is impossible to ignore. Our national media is trying to grapple with this using “buzz” words and phrases like “Trump derangement syndrome”, cringeworthy, self-loathing, and others.
Our country is in a type of deep trouble that few actually comprehend. Hatred blinds individuals, organizations, and even entire countries to the stabilizing acts of simple respect and human worth. Hatred blocks a person’s ability to love, so then personal motivations move away from
selflessness to selfishness, and are demonstrated through lust for power, greed, control, and self-gratification. Isn’t that what we are witnessing more intensely than ever now? Timothy looked down the centuries and saw: “For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, unloving, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, brutal, despisers of good, traitors, headstrong, haughty, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying its power. And from such people turn away!” (2 Timothy 3: 2-5)
As Seventh-Day Adventist Christians, we have intellectually already chosen to turn away from hatred and to embrace the love of Christ. However, the reality is that hatred is not only rampant but is growing everywhere. As the Holy Spirit is slowly withdrawn from humanity as this world draws to a close, everyone will eventually be “off the fence” and will have chosen which side they are on. Scripture indicates that only a remnant will choose Christ’s side of the fence while depending upon the Holy Spirit; but that the vast majority will choose apostasy and rebellion against Christ and the Holy Spirit. (Revelation 12: 17)
It seems every day there are more people and situations put in our path to hate. Scripture tells us to hate the sin, but not to hate the sinner, because judgment of people is reserved to God. If the SDA Church is the “remnant” church, an assembly of true believers in Christ, God will not allow anyone who is openly or secretly full of anger and hatred to remain there after the “shaking”. Hatred indeed blocks the ability to truly love others, but God is indeed love. (1 John 4: 8, 16). For your sake and the sake of family, friends, and anyone else who looks up to you, lay your hate and anger at the foot of Jesus’ Cross, and let Him heal your brokenness and restore your soul.