When hatred is necessary

Is hatred of others always a sin? Are we obliged to love every human being, even those who do great evil or behave with unspeakable cruelty? Must we believe, as one reader wrote to me last week, that ''God loves even the bad people'' - even the very worst people - and that we must strive to do the same?

ADVERTISEMENT

My correspondent was commenting on a recent column about the death of archterrorist and mass-murderer Yasser Arafat -- and specifically on my criticism of President Bush for having said, on first hearing of Arafat's death, "God bless his soul."

"God bless his soul? What a grotesque idea!" I wrote. "God, I am quite sure, will damn him for eternity."

But many readers defended Bush's reaction. One of them was Pat Buchanan, who replied to my column in a column of his own.

He began with a jab at "columnists who know the mind of God." Then he wrote: "In defense of President Bush, if that was his first reaction to Arafat's death, it bespeaks a Christian heart. As a boy in World War II, I was taught by Catholic nuns that while permissible to pray for the death of Hitler or Tojo, it was impermissible to pray for their damnation. That was hatred, and hatred is a sin."

Of course, if hatred -- even hatred of a Hitler or an Arafat -- is a sin, then love -- even love of such a monster -- must be a moral duty. And that is indeed what many Christians believe. "I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you," Jesus is quoted in Matthew, "so that you may be children of your Father in heaven." Catholics who pray the rosary implore God to "lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of thy mercy" -- in other words, the most wicked. As another e-mailer assured me last week, "Any Christian would pray that the Lord would have mercy on someone's soul, even if he was a mass murderer. To do less would be contrary to Bush's faith."

I have great respect for that faith and a deep appreciation for the good that Christians and Christianity have accomplished in the world. But my faith, Judaism, teaches a fundamentally different lesson about evil and how to respond to it.

Jewish tradition holds, with Ecclesiastes, that there is a time to love and a time to hate. The Hebrew Bible enjoins us to love our neighbor (Leviticus 19:18) and to love the stranger (Deuteronomy 10:19), but that love has its limits. We are not expected to love savage thugs or to ask God's mercy on them. On the contrary, we loathe the unrepentantly cruel because we believe God loathes them too.   Continued...