Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin PART 1

When it comes to LGBT people and the Christian church, there is one persistent concept that continues to surface: the idea that we are called to love the sinner, but hate the sin.

Perhaps you have heard a person of faith use this phrase.

For many Christians, this is the go to response for interacting with issues of gender identity, sexual orientation, and same sex marriage. How are we to respond to these matters? It's simple: we love the sinner, but hate the sin.

I plan to interact with this concept over the course of several blog posts, but for now, let's start with the basics.

Many Christians are quick to use this expression in relation to LGBT people, believing this to be a Biblical approach ("Biblical" meaning, rooted in the teachings of the Bible). Given this assumption, the first line of questioning should reasonably include the question, "Does this concept come from the Bible?"

"Love the sinner, hate the sin," does not appear anywhere in the Bible. 

The earliest form of this expression seems to come from a letter Augustine wrote, in which he uses the words, "with love for mankind and hatred of sins." But the most recognizable version of the quote is found in Gandhi's autobiography, in which he said, "hate the sin and not the sinner."

Not only have many Christians adopted Gandhi's quote as a Biblical teaching (it isn't), they have distorted Gandhi's original meaning.

Here is the original quote:

"Hate the sin and not the sinner is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world... It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. For we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers, and thus to harm not only that being but with him the whole world."

Interestingly, when taken in context, it seems the Gandhi was pointing out that it is nearly impossible to hate the sin but not the sinner. He went on to say that this concept is easy to understand, but very difficult to practice. Gandhi was suggesting that it is possible and necessary to attack systems of injustice without extending that attack to the individual people involved in the injustice.

He was suggesting that we should not lose sight of the precious and valuable people around us by equating their identity with sin. To do so, he said, would "harm not only that being, but with him the whole world."

Gandhi was not trying to make a case for claiming to love a person while simultaneously rejecting their sins. He was saying, "When you attack sin, don't get people tangled up in your hatred."

We will explore this supposedly Biblical teaching further in posts to follow.