Pacificism as Pure Hatred of the Innocent

Love and hate are often viewed as feelings in our culture. In the Bible, however, they have to do with prioritizing one over another. Christ argues that one cannot serve both God and money as though one can have two masters, not because one cannot have both in his life, but rather because he will either "hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other" (Matt 6:24 // Luke 16:13). Loving both is impossible because love is not a feeling, or even placing both in some sort of importance in one's list of important things; but rather, loving one means placing one over the other so that they other is not loved when a choice must be made between them.

This becomes an important point against pacificism or non-violence. The scenario where a murderer breaks into your house to kill your family demonstrates where pacificists have gone astray in the understanding of their responsibilities to love their families over others. Paul argues that a man is to provide for his own household, not those of the world, precisely, because he is given the responsibility to love it over others by keeping it from the chaos of death that would occur if he did not financially care for it. If given the choice of feeding the neighborhood kids and feeding his own, Paul says he is worse than an unbeliever if he does not take care of his own. But if the concept of love one sees in many pacifist arguments is accurate, how can this be true? One is to love all people equally. In fact, the very concept of biblical love as placing the lives of one group over another is really what the pacificist is rejecting. But it is clear that he is rejecting biblical love because he is rejecting the way that God loves.

In Malachi 1:2-5, God declares what love and hate look like in just such a scenario as the one I laid out above. Israel is God's household.

“I have loved you,” says the Lord. But you say, “How have you loved us?” “Is not Esau Jacob's brother?” declares the Lord. “Yet I have loved Jacob ³ but Esau I have hated. I have laid waste his hill country and left his heritage to jackals of the desert.” ⁴ If Edom says, “We are shattered but we will rebuild the ruins,” the Lord of hosts says, “They may build, but I will tear down, and they will be called ‘the wicked country,’ and ‘the people with whom the Lord is angry forever.’” ⁵ Your own eyes shall see this, and you shall say, “Great is the Lord beyond the border of Israel!”

To love Israel, God must hate its destroyers; and He does not merely hate its destroyers in terms of emotions (God doesn't have emotions in the sense that we do). Instead, love and hate are proven by actions that either save the life of those loved or destroy the lives of those not loved. God saves Israel's lives by destroying the destroyers. 

What this means is that no one can say he loves his family if he saves the murderer and lets him kill his family. He has loved the murderer because he has chosen him over his family. He has chosen to save his life so that the lives of his family are destroyed. He has loved the one and hated the others. This must be the conclusion because love and hate are not emotion in this scenario, but the very actions of choosing one party's life over the other. One cannot love both when a choice must be made anymore than one can make a square circle. The choice itself is a prioritization of one over the other. The immorality of inaction when one is given a duty to love is no more less responsible and evil than the immorality of action.

Likewise, when we see this passage come up again, it is in Romans 9, where God has chosen His people as vessels of honor/salvation and the reprobate as vessels of dishonor/damnation, and He has done so for the purpose of using the damnation of the reprobate to love and save those who are chosen. Again, love is placing one's life over another. Hate is placing one's life under another. There is simply no such thing as loving everyone the same, and indeed, it would be evil for one given the charge to love one person or group over others, and one the moment of choice comes, to betray them by choosing their destroyers over them. And all because Jesus supposedly has a modern inclusive view of love, a view that does not withstand the context of any love passage in the Bible, including those spoken by the Lord Jesus. 

In terms of government, it is like a nation that promises to protect its citizens suddenly doing nothing and allowing their enemies to come in and slaughter them. It is like police standing by and watching women and children getting raped and murdered. The father of a family is no less government than these. The soldier, the policeman, the father all have their respective duties to love those under their care, and when they do not protect them, God's wrath falls swiftly upon such wicked governments. Why in the world would Christians, who should know better than anyone, be any different? They ought to love more perfectly like God than any other government. He who does otherwise is worse than an unbeliever. He has denied the God who made him, and brought absolute shame on Christ who destroys all of the destroyers of His household. Let him who betrays his household in such a way be anathema.