Occasionally, I recklessly venture into the world of tweets to take the pulse of the world. I always come back more or less shaken from these excursions. On a brief foray yesterday, I was particularly jarred by one tweet that blatantly claimed, “God hates … even more than I do.” I will let you fill in the missing ingredient; I have seen many variants of this tweet in which the targets were political parties, politicians, whole categories of people and an assortment of behaviors deemed hateful.
Often, these statements are made by individuals proudly claiming
to be Catholics. I find that rather puzzling and disturbing. The Evangelist John
tells us, “But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” (John 4,8) Love is not something God does sporadically: love one minute, hate the next.
God would stop being God if he stopped being love and loving even for a
fraction of a second.
Even when faced with evil, God’s response is always loving, because he
is never anything else but love. Only love can vanquish evil.
Martin Luther King Jr., in his last Christmas sermon before he was assassinated, said: "Love is understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill toward all men.” He was well aware that all men included those who wished him dead. He was deeply convinced that,
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.”
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