Hearing and doing the Word: learning how not to hate people

Hearing and doing the Word often involves learning not to hate people in the various ways in which it is possible to hate. When we become aware that hatred is verboten, it sets in motion a sequence of events that uncomfortably fructifies us as we realise the presence in us of recurring violations; and consequently, in a state of humiliation, we confess to our own hearts, in the presence of God, our insufficiency to liberate ourselves from chains of which we were not aware.

Romans 7:7 - King James Version <7> What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.

Violations of the commandment not to hate recur like the impulse to smoke a cigarette recurs to the addict.

Similarly, the violations are pleasurable. There is a Hellish pleasure and a Heavenly pleasure, a pleasure in chains and a pleasure in liberty, a pleasure in uselessness and a pleasure in use.

If we feed these Hellish delights, we drown in the swelling of the Jordan, the Great Flood sweeps us away, we die putting Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the furnace; for assuredly we will want to put people into some kind of furnace, if we do not overcome the temptation to hate.

If we do not feed these damning pleasures, then there is a vacuum into which the righteousness and understanding of God may enter.

There is, as it were, no strange fire of self-love and no image of jealousy in our temples; so there is room for God to move in, which sets in motion a sequence of panel-beating-like, rarely-perceptible changes which order our inner and outer environments and modulate our very sincerity and its like.

When God's righteousness and understanding, bread and wine, move into our innermost hearts, the voice of the bride and the bridegroom sounds joyously and the sound of the millstone is heard. It is then that we touch not the oil and wine and consequently have oil in our lamps and oil and wine to pour into the spiritual and natural wounds of others.

2 Kings 6:17 - King James Version <17> And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.

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