Overcoming the Hate in Your Life
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Written by Jimmie Burroughs – Email this article to a friend
“Kim Kardashian Joins Drop Dead Diva to Romance Fred” is the title of an article I just read. I have never watched one of the Kardashian shows, and I know little about the family, but the comments that followed the article were clues that lots of people hate Kim and the show. I only read the first two pages of comments, which were 40 out of the 3,289 posted, and they were almost without exception extremely negative in terms of hate. I am wondering why so many hate an impersonal TV personality that they do not know and will probably never meet; which also they do not even have to watch on TV. It seems like such a waste of time and emotions.
I particularly noticed the reasons given for hating Kim: she can’t act; she is a phony; she has a large behind; she just likes money; she is a poor role model for young girls; she has no morals, and she’s ugly, to name a few. I find a hard time justifying any of those reasons as being valid for hating a person even though they certainly are not desirable attributes for anyone.
Why is it important to get rid of hate in the first place? Hate is harmful to your mental and physical health; it is losing control of your emotions and allowing someone else to be in control. That is a good motivation for wanting to learn how to rid you of hate. Hate is well described in this quote: “Hating someone is like drinking poison thinking it is going to harm someone else.”
There are three primary issues to understand in order to take the right actions to rid you of hate:
- Understanding what hate is
- Understanding what causes hate
- Understanding how to rid yourself of hate
First, consider what hate is:
I think most know that hate is an emotion. What many may not know is that hate is a God given emotion often referred to as a drive. It is considered the opposite drive of the love drive. The question is, why would God include a drive in our emotional makeup opposite of love when He is described as love in the Bible and when his commandments are to love God and our neighbors as ourselves.
If you think that is hard to understand, figure this one out. God, who is the God of love, also expressed his hate at the Children of Israel on a number of occasions and came close to destroying them for some of the things they did. Jesus also, who was God in the flesh, expressed his hate at what the money changers were doing in the Temple and violently overturned their tables and drove them out of the Temple.
When God made man, according to Geneses, he made him in his own image. Therefore, the emotions that we have are similar to the ones that God has, including the hate drive. That may really seem to be confusing but not so when you bring it into perspective. If God has a hate drive and he outfitted us with one, there must be a positive reason. Think about this: Was it right to hate the terrorists for their dastardly deeds that killed nearly 3,000 people on September 11, 2002? Just suppose there was no hate drive, everyone would have gone merely on their way, and we would have been hit repeatedly until there was no one left, like mindless sheep being led to the slaughter.
Hitler was hated because he was an evil man who murdered innocent people, and so were Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. Hatred for the evil of godless men is a motivation to track them down and kill them before they bring further harm to innocent people. You might be thinking, well it was their actions, not their person. How can you separate the two? Their actions identified who they were.
Second, what causes hate?
Hate, which is closely associated with the anger drive, is a protective device that gets our adrenaline flowing and puts us in a defensive mode to protect our loved ones and ourselves. In that sense, hate is a valuable and needed drive. It is when it is misused and wasted that it becomes useless and harmful; for instance, like hating Kim Kardashian or hating anyone for trivial reasons.
Most of hate is because of dislike of what another person says or does which does not necessarily threaten us; it only hurts our feelings or our ego. If someone steals your girlfriend, it hurts both your feelings and ego. Notice the hurt is yours; it will not change a thing, neither will it cause your girlfriend to come back to you. Hate might seem to be a relief to you for a little while, but it does not last. Hatred is not someone else’s problem; it is yours or mine and we must be the ones to deal with it.
Hate takes you just one-step closer to anger, which also can take you one-step closer to danger; it is your hate drive warning you with an emotion of extreme dislike for the present situation to find a safer place quickly and to take another way out that makes better sense and protects you. If you fail to listen, then you are drawn into a negative situation, which can only bring you harm, harm to your body or harm to your emotions.
Understanding how to rid you of hate:
The best way to overcome hate is with love. Love is like krypton to hate; it weakens it and destroys it. That is why Jesus said, “But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you,” (Matthew 5:44). King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, said, “If your enemy hungers, feed him, and if he thirsts, give him drink. And when you do these things to him, you welcome coals of fire upon his head, and Lord Jehovah rewards you,” (Proverbs 25:21-22). Not that you would want literally to pour hot coals on anyone’s head; the point is that it squashes hate and renders are ineffective and is far more effective than hate..
When we rid ourselves of hate, we rid ourselves of allowing someone else to have the control of our emotions. Having another person control our emotions is like giving the enemy the access to your bank account; it never brings about a good situation.
I realize how hard it is to be kind to a person who means you no good, but if you are interested in ridding yourself of hate, love is the way. Revenge would tell us differently. It would say what could I do to get even with this so and so and put them in their place. Be careful with your hate; it can sometimes lead you to lying in a puddle of your own blood waiting for the ambulance to come and haul you away. I knew of a man, in my hometown, that followed hate’s advice. His hatred grew into anger and then led to violence; one day he took his gun and shot his neighbor. His reward was not a solution to his hatred or the problem, but instead it resulted in his spending the rest of his life in prison.
Harboring hate in your life is sort of like being in your own self-made prison. It takes away your freedom of contentment and replaces it with a feeling of resentment and revenge. Hate is and enemy to happiness, contentment and all the things that add zest to life. It is opposite of love, and it poisons the soul. Let love free you of hate and restore the control of your emotions.
About the author: Jimmie Burroughs is a motivational speaker and author who has been involved in teaching Christian Personal Development for more than 30 years. There are hundreds of articles to help you on this website (Website Contents) in your personal growth.
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