1.6.26 ~ In sane

In our study yesterday, I shared with you some thoughts on love/ahava. If you didn’t get a chance to meditate and think about those thoughts, I would encourage you to go back and think them through in relation to all your current and past relationships as well as the ones in the future.  Note: part of living the image of God is simultaneously living in the past, present and future. Huh? Think about that for a minute or two :-). Every decision you make throughout the day is based on past experiences in light of your current circumstances and the hope of the best future. 


I was asked a pertinent question yesterday: is hatred, loving somebody less? Or is it truly hatred? Does God, who is love, hate?


The word for hatred/SANE it’s often translated to hate, which as we can all testify, describes an emotional reaction of repulsion. A person who has this feeling strongly desires to keep distance from the offense or the offender. In other words, hate is all about distance. It’s just the opposite of love, which brings about the desire for closeness. 


When it’s used in the Tanakh, a.k.a. the Old Testament, it's usually associated with idolatry, opposition, aversion and ill will.. It describes a reaction rather than a positive action. In other words, someone or something acts in such a way that creates a reaction with a strong, emotional rejection. 


Rebecca, the bride of Isaac was blessed with this thought (Gen. 24:60). Isaac knew it all too well (Gen. 26:67). Leah lived it with her honey bunny, Jacob (Gen. 29:31-33). Joseph, the one who is the prototype, knew this all too well from his brothers (Gen. 37:4,5). It was strategically used against the 70 that went down to Egypt (Ex. 1:10) and the list could go on and on. 


King David, the one who the throne for Messiah was established, knew this all too well. His enemies treated him as if he was a leprous, a person to be shunned, avoided and rejected (Psa. 25:19). It doesn’t necessarily mean that they wanted him to have bodily harm. However, if we ever see violence/hamas associated with sane, count on some bodily harm!   The basic sense of the word is that his enemies exclude him from the most valued component in God’s culture: community. They want him out. That’s equivalent to wanting him to cease existing. 


I have heard it said, "a man without a relationship is no longer a man (spiritually, emotionally and physically)! That's why isolation is so dangerous.


I’m sure all of us have felt some kind of hatred. You know, that feeling where people don’t want to be around you anymore. They find your views offensive. Perhaps they’re threatened by your commitments to trying to understand God. They don’t acknowledge your practices. They are scandalized by your presence. They just want you to go away and don’t come back no more no more no more no more. 


Consequently, this means separation. Agony. Brokenhearted existence. Emotional and sometimes physical affliction. And it’s especially towards you since you were really, just trying to bring about awakening and consolation (2 Cor. 5:19-21). Enemies don’t always carry swords, sometimes they carry Bibles. Sometimes they just use their tongues. Sometimes they use the media. Regardless of their weapon of choice, they want separation from you.


Every bible hero knows that God is a god of unity (Deut. 6:4; Mk. 12:29). The psalmist reminded us how beautiful it is when brothers dwell together in unity (Psa. 133:1). A reality that makes Yeshua's comment even more difficult when he says “love your enemies”. He doesn’t say, "preach to them"! "Correct them"! "Convert them"! He says, "love them". "Close the gap".


If you're like me, one of the first passages that comes to my mind when I think about hatred is God saying "I hated/sane Esau, but Jacob I loved/ahav" (Mal. 1:2,3; Rom. 9:13).



I have loved you, saith the LORD. Yet ye say, Wherein hast thou loved us? Was not Esau Jacob's brother? saith the LORD: yet I loved Jacob, And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.

(Mal. 1:2,3)


 Here we see that God is reacting to protracted, willful rebellion. The same can be said for God‘s rejection of sacrifices, offerings and feast days (Isa. 1:13-15). God hates them because they are laced with hypocrisy, not because they’re soon to be replaced rituals. Sane/hatred is always a response to a previous action. It does not initiate. That's worth reading again :-).


What’s the flipside of the sane coin? The antidote for sane? It’s AHAV/love. Love is active. It takes initiative. It’s purposeful. I respond to the emotional reaction of hatred by initiating the purposeful action of benevolence towards another at cost to myself. I love regardless of how I feel. Hence, the coined phrase, "You I love". I find it quite interesting that the reverse of the word sane (shin-nun-alef) is the root word for wife or bride/Ishah (alef-nun-shin).  Perhaps the opposite of hatred is the character of the woman, the wife, the honey bunny who gives life; someone made to love. 


Shalom!

Alan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

4.4.26 ~ Can You Count to Three?

Image
Today, Saturday 4/4/26, many will celebrate the day that Yeshua was visibly seen risen from the grave (John 20:1; Matt. 28:1–10; Luke 24:1–10)! The day after His resurrection, Yeshua would be out ministering to the doubts of His disciples, helping them realize that He is alive and that the purpose of His resurrection would be catalyzed by their lives. For the disciples closest to Yeshua and those who stood at a safe distance away, it was a time of doubt. The enemy was in hot pursuit. They were fearful for their lives, but just at the God-appointed time, their salvation appeared.  Does that sound vaguely familiar? It should. Earlier this week, on the day after Passover—the 15th of the first month—the natural-born Israelites and those who joined them through the blood of the Lamb exited Egypt and headed toward the sea. In just a few days, during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Pharaoh would not be happy that he let the Israelites go; he felt betrayed, and he was hot (Ex. 14:5–9). Mose...
Read more

3.20.25

Good morning! Yesterday, we learned some essential truths about how to 'be still and know that He is God (Psa. 46:10). Today, I want to ask you a different question based on life's ability to throw a wide variety of circumstances at us!  One of the most difficult situations is when we are threatened by someone or some circumstance. Have you ever been threatened?  Oh, maybe no one came up to you with a gun, or shouted at you with malice, or told you that you were going to be tortured or punished.  Maybe all the threat you ever had was the innuendo of rejection, or the social snub or something much less violent than jail time.  But my guess is that if you are traveling the road with Yeshua, living a Torah lifestyle, you know what it means to be threatened. Every time the circumstances of your life look as though they are about to cave in, you are threatened.  It might not be a threat from a physical enemy, then again...but we all know that in one form or another t...
Read more

3.22.25

Good morning! Shabbat shalom! Although the portion of Vayakhel/and he assembled is almost entirely focused on the construction of the tabernacle, it begins by reminding the children of Israel that no work may be done on the Sabbath (Ex. 35:2,3). Why does it begin here rather than jumping right into how to construct the Tabernacle? Enquiring minds want to know :-) By placing the topic of the Sabbath against the construction of the Tabernacle it's God's way of defining the boundaries of the Sabbath...that even the most intimate work for the Lord needs to be put aside for His 'Date Day'. However, upon further investigation, there’s another layer to understand that connects us back to the golden calf (Ex. 32). As we know, while Moses was up on the mount getting the instructions from God the children of Israel decided to make an object that would replace Moses, their deliverer; The object, later known as the golden calf, originally intended as a 'necessary' means to ...
Read more