John
As one of the 85% (on average) of so-called christians on this forum who is perfectly comfortable to harbour, nay promote, the obnoxious idea that it is possible to love someone while disliking them, I am puzzled by your continued stance on this issue.
I had thought we were getting somewhere on the âlove yet dislikeâ thread itself. It seems I am mistaken. Just to reiterate, in case you or anybody else arenât fully up to speed with that lengthy discussion, my position is that loving somebody, in the sense of Christian agape love, is entirely compatible with disliking them as a person. And disliking them is not hating them.
A simple, topical example from the real world will illustrate:
I vehemently dislike moors murderer Ian Brady. I also vehemently disliked his partner in crime Myra Hindley while she was alive. I vehemently disliked the horrible things they did, and consequently vehemently disliked them as people. For as far as I am concerned, the person and their actions cannot be separated. They are as intrinsically interdependent as the proverbial chicken and the proverbial egg.
Now you might argue that since Brady has been declared clinically insane by a court, his actions are somehow less culpable than Hindleyâs. I would agree. If one accepts that a person â any person â is not in control of their mental faculties while carrying out an action â any action â then in what meaningful sense can we âblameâ that person for that action, or hold them responsible for it, however morally repugnant we find it?
I donât know, Iâm not a criminal psychologist. But I do know that as Christians we are commanded to love that person despite their morally repugnant, if not morally culpable, actions. That means treating them with kindness and respect and care, even while â say â imprisoning them.
And harder even than this, we are commanded to love not only Brady, the insane murderer, but Hindley also. And without the defence of diminished responsibility, Hindleyâs crimes seem all the more heinous, do they not?
Now as to whether I did, or could, âloveâ Brady and Hindley (as Lord Longford did, in Hindleyâs case, at least), I confess I just donât know. I certainly found the red top pressâs obsessive vilification of Hindley pretty nauseating. I guess the best I could say is that I would have done the best I could.
But of this I am certain: my loving (or not loving) Brady and Hindley is in no way contingent on me liking (or disliking) them. And not only is it not contingent, it isnât in fact related at all. The two attitudes â or positions, or actions, or however you wish to classify them â are distinct, separate. (They arenât always, or even often, of course: I imagine that most of the people we love we also like. But not all of them.)
As I have said before on the other thread, you seem determined to conflate the words loving and liking, and indeed the words disliking and hating, to such a degree that your original question becomes, in effect, âcan we love someone while not loving themâ â surely a meaningless pleonasm.
Or am I misrepresenting you?
All the best
Johnny