Are You A Lover or A Fighter?

In 1982 Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson made a very poignant statement in this song.  In the song Michael tells Paul that he is a Lover, not a Fighter.  Thereby setting up the premise that, at least when it comes to the love of a woman, you are either a lover or a fighter.  Of course this might beg the question: “Are you not willing to fight for those things you love?”  Certainly the WWII generation had a better understanding of fighting for love of country.  A concept, I’d dare say that has been lost on most today.

We have been permeated in our cultures around the world today of these concepts, that if you are one thing then you cannot be another.  When in reality it is not quite so stark a separation.  You actually CAN be a lover and fighter at exactly the same time.  Today I’d like to address one of these either OR’s that I’ve already addressed in this earlier post.  And that is “Are you a Lover or a Hater?”  I know I’ve stated my position on this in the past, but it is an important point for many different reasons and it is a topic that is important because it affords a foundation for many other understandings.

We seem to have this general understanding in societies around the world that you either love someone or something, or else you hate them (or it).  If you look them up in a thesaurus, you will even find that they are antonyms of each other (as is found here and here).  The idea is that they are opposite concepts of each other and are mutually exclusive of each other.  You either love, or you hate, but you cannot do both.

We tend to believe this despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary around us.  Consider love of country.  As much as you probably love your country, there are probably some things you hate about it as well.  You love your country, but you hate it as well.  We tend to assign degrees of strength to one concept or another such that one side or the other wins.  For example, if you mostly love you country, even though there are a few things you hate about it, you would say you love your country when asked.  And we even apply degrees of love to those objects we love.  I love my country, but l also love my wife’s country.  I just love my country the most.

Rather than considering the two concepts as complimentary forces, and in static degrees, we instead break them apart, make them competing forces, and add varying degrees of strength to them.  This does us a great disservice in understanding so many other Spiritual concepts.

For example, the Bible states that God is Love.  One might then conclude that the opposite of God is then hate.  Of course you are screaming at your screen right now that I’ve made a false premise.  But we are logically carrying the thought forward, are we not?  If I am to believe that the opposite of Love is Hate, and then believe that God is Love, isn’t the opposite of God then Hate?  The logic is not quite so convoluted as you might think, except for the fact that we know that (1) the opposite of God is that which is anti-God, generally Satan and his evil forces, and (2) that God does indeed hate.

But we don’t have to twist the logic to prove the premise to ourselves.  We only need to remove the degrees of strength we apply to love and hate.  If I say I love my country without any degree of strength, then I absolutely love my country.  I don’t have to say I mostly love my country EXCEPT for this grievance or that.  I don’t have to say I mostly love my wife EXCEPT for these minor annoyances.  No.  I love my country and I love my wife.

But at the exact same time I hate where my country is headed, as a society.  And if I remove the degree of strength, then I absolutely hate my country.  So I don’t have to flip my argument around and say I hate my country EXCEPT for these things over here.  I just simply hate my country.

In other words, Love and Hate actually do act as complimentary forces.  As to their degrees of strength, let me ask you this: “Does God love me more than he loves you?”  I don’t think so.  “Does God love you more than he does your parents?”  Once again, I don’t think so.  “Does God hate your sin more than he hates my sin?”  No.  Of course not.  “Does God hate the sins of all your friends more than he hates your sin?”  No, God loves (because he IS Love) and God hates (because he cannot stand to be in the presence of Sin), and each are equal parts.

And with this simple understanding, we now have Tough Love explained.  I never have been a fan of that phrase ever since it has been introduced.  Love has always been tough.  Love has never been weak.  And (so-called) Tough Love is some weak philosophical attempt of mankind to resolve the conflict within themselves that they absolutely love someone, but hate the destructive behavior they are engaged in at the same time.  Well how do you think God feels?  He loves us (he created us in his image).  He absolutely Loves us.  And yet he hates our sin.  He most assuredly, absolutely hates our sin.  But you have never, ever, once, heard God say that he needs to employ Tough Love.  Because his love is absolute, and his hatred is absolute.

We don’t need to sit around and come up with silly slogans like “Make Love, Not War“.  We simply need to let our love be Love, and our hate be Hate.  And let that be the balance and the guide to rightly dividing good and evil within our lives.