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What? Who?

          Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good.  (Romans 12:9)

          Sincere: 1530s, "pure, unmixed, unadulterated;" also "free from pretense or falsehood," from French sincere (16c.), from Latin sincerus, of things, "whole, clean, pure, uninjured, unmixed," figuratively "sound, genuine, pure, true, candid, truthful" (unadulterated by deceit), a word of uncertain origin. Apparently the popular etymology of “without wax” has no historical basis. (Etymology of "sincere" by etymonline)

          Love must be pure, unmixed, unadulterated, free from pretense or falsehood, whole, clean, pure, uninjured, and unmixed. That’s an intimidating list of requirements, but it comes down to a simple idea. Love must be love. But the fact that someone feels the need to mention it (with good reason!) suggests that, contrary to the popular belief of some, “love” is not necessarily love. At the very least, it might be impure, mixed, adulterated, full of pretense or falsehood, divided, dirty, impure, injured, or mixed.

Now, here’s the question that seems to be begged. What is the object of the love that is sincere? Can someone love without an object. I know one can love nothing, but can one love nothing? Even if someone claims to love nothing, can they be telling the truth and undeluded? A better philosopher could probably answer that with authority and logic. I can only answer it from intuition, and I suspect one cannot love nothing. At the very least, it would require that the lover of nothing destroy everything because otherwise, everything contaminates the nothing.

Having come that far, the next word is curious. Read it as if you have never read it before. “Hate…” What is the word you expect? Is it “What”? Or “Who”? Given the rest of Scripture, and the commands to love God, love our neighbors, and love our enemies, I think I expected a call to hate someone, not something. On the other hand, hating something makes it safe. We can claim our hatred is directed at something and take it out on those people who do it, approve of it, condone it, or otherwise fail to hate it in the manner we think they should. But we’re told to love our enemies, so that fails the test.

Going back a few days, there’s a description for what we are to do in our hatred of something: fight or flight. But when we choose to fight, our choice of weapons and enemies is often wrong. We aim at who, not what, and we’re too often too wiling to use the government – the power of the sword.

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