Those of you who love God, must hate evil

My Uncle Jim has a fondness for poetry, and sometimes his poems inspire my own internal reflections. Here’s the poem:

Poem for Thursday - God Created Man

When that old Whippoorwill coughs and sneezes at dawn

Rabbits all dead from myxomatosis

The trout in the stream swim past with three eyes

Lions in zoos under hypnosis

Cows munching down poisonous grass

Suicidal budgie just out of reach

Manufactured rain burning the skin off

Dead whales washed up on the beach

Pigs forced screaming down slaughterhouse ramps

Horses working blind down the pits

Donkey laden so much their backs break

Dog fights rip each other to bits

Badgers and foxes crushed on the roads

Or legs snapped and bleeding in traps

Dangerous pheasants blasted out of the sky

By heroes in camouflage caps

Blood of wild creatures on the gladiator’s face

Hacked to pieces in the Coliseum

To shrieks and applause from the half insane crowd

Sea birds drowning in pumped petroleum

Hens in small cages laying egg after egg

Born in cages in cages they die

Thank God who created dear Man to look after

The beasts, fishes and birds in the sky

Jim posts his poetry and music online, and I commented on this post:

"Sorry for such a long comment, but this is so very very true.

God says to humanity to 'have dominion over the earth' and 'all these things I give unto you.' The Garden of Eden is paradise because it represents a perfect balance between nature, animal, man and God. It's ours to enjoy - there's no beauty without an admirer. And I've realised it's no accident that humanity is the one that tips the balance when they eat the forbidden fruit. That the desire to know more, do more, be more can destroy everything.

It all spirals downwards. And God gets sad (that's actually what it says in Hebrew - Got got sad.) So He destroys humanity in the Flood because of what you've written. Human cruelty. He saves the animals and one decent man and his family. Afterwards, He warns that 'a person's heart inclines towards evil from their youth.' He gives humanity 7 laws, including 1 specifically about animal rights. People are never taught these things sadly, least of all at Sunday school, etc.

The Great Flood is horrible, violent, tragic. And I understand why people reject it. A perfect God destroying humanity and all the innocent animals? But I also think God hates what you're talking about so much that He was willing to destroy humanity and start all over again. And I find that oddly comforting. There's a possibility that God might see malice like we do. As completely unacceptable. Hence all the laws in the first five books (the Torah.) Hence all the laws about animals - there are over 60 laws on the treatment of animals in the Bible. So at least some people (and perhaps God) see things like us.

It's a massive credit to you that your poems inspire all these reflections in me.”

To reflect upon my reflection, dare I say humbly and respectfully that I think most people have no idea what God wants. After all, why even worship God… isn’t he a celestial dictator? Does the being who created this fallen, rotten, even cruel earth deserve any respect? Isn’t God a bit weird and remote too?

I never understood what God wanted as a child who went to an Anglican school, a Sunday school and Pathfinders programme. I never understood the point until reading ‘The Rational Bible’ by Dennis Prager, a Jewish thinker and theologian. He makes a brilliant point:

God’s utmost desire is for people to be good. God wants people to be kind to one another, to animals and to His creation. It’s the ultimate thing that motivates Him. God wants goodness more than He wants people to accept Him. Human evil is why He destroys the world in the Flood. It’s why after the Flood, He gives 7 laws for all people of all ages to keep. They don’t mention worshipping God much (one sentence.) The ‘7 Laws of Noah’ are first and foremost moral laws - laws that promote goodness and prevent evil. Look them up if you’re interested.With this in mind, God’s love of good and hatred of evil is what motivates all his decisions, including his most controversial.

• Evil is why God commands the Israelites to exterminate the Canaanites - because their civilisation was vile. Burning babies alive was not acceptable to Him. And if the Israelites leant towards evil, God would kick them out of Canaan and punish them too (which is exactly what happened.)

  
  

• Evil is why he sent the prophets to confront the corrupt, shallow and wicked rulers of the Middle East - first and foremost those in Israel.

  
  

• The problem of a good God allowing evil to cause suffering is the entire point of the book of Job, the ‘oldest’ book in the Bible.

  
  

• Evil is what torments King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes - why God allows the wicked to prosper and the righteous to suffer. And that if He allows it, God is pointless and life itself is pointless.

  
  

• Evil is why God decided to become a human being and confront the religious hypocrites around him and the rulers of Roman-occupied Israel.

  
  

• Evil is why God became a person and died an excruciating death - to allow people to find a way out of evil more easily than before.

When I realised what God’s ‘shtick’ was, everything shifted for me. To clarify, God doesn’t only want goodness - there are other things He wants to - but goodness is the driving force behind everything. It’s what motivates everything. And that fierce pursuit of goodness and hatred of evil makes me love some part of God. I don’t love the God who allows the abusers my Uncle Jim and I revile so much. I don’t love the God who chose the Jews to be His messengers, only to allow them to be nearly exterminated in the Holocaust. I don’t love the God who allows cells to metastasise into cancer cells and so on and so on.

With my hatred of God laid bare, I also remember an old Jewish saying - “If I knew God, I’d be God.” We cannot know why God allows so much suffering. We cannot know even a grain of sand of what God knows. But I know that He hates evil and suffering as much as I do, probably more. And that His hatred of evil motivates Him more than it motivates even little-old-me. My own hatred of malice, cruelty and coldness shapes my whole worldview. Put in patronising, modern terms I’m very ‘justice-sensitive.’ In comparison, God’s ‘justice-sensitivity’ shakes His entire being to the core.

In conclusion, I resonate with the Psalmist who said:

“Those of you who love God must hate evil.”

That is entirely the point. If you don’t hate evil, if you don’t fight it, don’t feel appalled by it or even just turn a blind eye to it, then what’s the point of following God? And by extension, what’s the point of anything? Isn’t human evil why God destroyed the world? Doesn’t life feel pointless to the core when the wicked prevail? Or is it just my neurodivergent, ‘justice-sensitivity’ talking?

Because there are no categories, divisions, concepts nor any worldly affairs that really matter besides one - the line between right and wrong; the line between good and evil.