When You Hate Someone

Chapter 4
When You Hate Someone

As beautiful and transforming as my heart resurrection experience was, I began to wrestle hard with an emotion I could suppress and control previously—hatred. It was always there on some level, but good Christians, especially ones in full-time ministry, are not supposed to have lingering problems with hatred. I felt bad for having hateful feelings and kept going to the Lord like a broken record, expressing forgiveness and then asking for forgiveness in return. This long-standing emotion would rise to the surface, stronger at times than others, and keep wanting to have the same conversation.

My rational self would talk it back down, saying, This is stupid and old and totally irrational. My logical edge succeeded in pushing this emotion back for decades. Only it did not go away. Not only that, my hate started to take on an increasingly toxic sting to the point that finally I decided to get some help. The truth is, I hated someone—a woman connected to my biological father. And I had hated her for as long as I could remember.

One of my earliest memories as a four-year-old was screaming uncontrollably at this woman and saying just that: “I hate you!” Even as an adult, this emotion of hate had a strange intensity to it whenever it came up. Looking back, I think I was scared of what I really felt because of its intensity. I knew biblically that hatred is not an acceptable disposition of the heart, having heard all of the threatening sermons about what can happen to people who hate others and refuse to forgive from the heart. “But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (1 John 2:11). Also, “Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him” (3:15 niv). I kept thinking, I shouldn’t feel like this, and I shouldn’t have this problem, only I did have this problem, even on my best days. As a minister and a woman of God, I had judged myself harshly for not being capable of forgiving someone as the Bible instructs us. On top of it all, this was turning into a fierce internal wrestling match, and one that I was losing.

Upon referral from a friend, I made an appointment with an inner healing and deliverance minister to try to find some help. Even though it was an emotional situation, it felt strangely spiritual. As I said in the last chapter, wherever there are bad fruits, then we need to look for roots. Until the roots are exposed and dealt with, you cannot change the fruit. It is impossible. Some roots are buried very deep, and the Holy Spirit has to take you through a process of excavation. When we are ready to face it, He will find a way to bring the issue to our attention for our ultimate good and not to shame or condemn us. Remember, He is a healer.

The Difference between Hate, Rage and Anger

Merriam-Webster’s defines hate as “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury; extreme dislike or disgust.”¹ There is a progression from anger into full-blown hatred. Hatred begins with the emotion of anger. Suppressed anger turns to rage, and rage turns to hatred.

When you are angry, it is an emotional response to what someone did. For example, someone cuts you off on the road and you respond with the angry blast of your car horn or, for some, with a universal hand gesture. It is temporary, a reaction in the moment, and it is over. The underlying emotion was probably a genuine fear of being in an accident, and anger took control of your fear and stabilized the situation. Or your employee neglected to handle an important task. That negligence, what he or she did, caused you to feel or respond with anger. Again, anger was the cover emotion for what you really felt. Perhaps you were frustrated at missing an important deadline, or you feared losing an important client due to their negligence, or something else. Anger can be constructive if you recognize it as an emotion alerting you to something that needs attention in your environment. In the case of the negligent employee, too many episodes of negligence and your subsequent anger responses would naturally lead to a change in the employee’s environment.

Rage, by contrast, is suppressed, bottled-up anger that can gush out and be highly destructive. Rage is more dangerous than anger. It might express itself violently, both physically and verbally. Uncontained rage behaves in almost a primal fashion and causes you to react without considering the consequences. When you are in a fit of rage, you might attack a person physically, throw objects or destroy property. You might also abuse someone verbally. Rage can be turned inward and result in self-harming behavior. Rage is also damaging to your emotional well-being and your body. It pairs with insomnia, depression and anxiety. It also can lead to heart attacks, strokes and a weakened immune system.² I recall watching a fit of rage coming from a middle-aged man who performed social work at a local government-funded agency where I was employed for a season. Nobody knew exactly what triggered him, but suddenly he began throwing his papers and sharp desk objects. Next, he picked up his desktop computer monitor and threw it to the ground forcibly, causing it to shatter. After his uncontained fit of rage, we never saw him at the agency again.

When we talk about hatred, I have noticed how culturally and religiously programmed we are to not have, feel or admit our feelings of hatred unless it serves someone’s agenda. Hatred is different from anger because it is not about what someone did but about who someone is. We are often conditioned to hate certain political parties, perceived enemy nations or various ideological “isms” that appear to threaten our economy and culture. In the United States, we are strongly persuaded not to hate other races or alternative sexual orientations. We can still become an object of hate when we do not agree with unbiblical sexual orientations, however. In churches, we are pushed to forgive and love our abusers instantly. And we are taught to drop all of our hate at the altar without any process. That method does not work. Forgiveness is a starting place, but you must have some process to overcome hatred fully. For the purposes of this book, I want to focus on hate on a more personal level, specifically on the progression from anger into hatred because you have experienced an injury.

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Excerpt from Inner Healing and Deliverance Handbook by Jennifer Eivaz provided by Chosen Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group. Copyright 2022. Used by permission.

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