Sunshine and Light

Hating a Child Killer

Over on National Review's the Corner (yes, I realize that just stopped some of you in your tracks. Take a deep breath, and move on), John Podhoretz posts the following

Rod Dreher has written a profoundly moving post about a grandfather of one of the murdered girls at the Amish schoolhouse "instructing the young not to hate" the monster who shot up that school and tied up those girls with wire. Rod writes: "Could you do that? Could you stand over the body of a dead child and tell the young not to hate her killer? I could not. Please God, make me into the sort of man who could."

I am a modestly observant Jew, not a Christian, but I can certainly see the beauty and the moral seriousness that would follow from attempting to hew as closely as possible to Christ's example of unconditional love and forgiveness. All the same, this story disturbs me deeply — because there can be no question that anger can be as righteous as forgiveness. I'm not sure I would want to be someone who succeeded in rising above hatred of those who murder children. Does this mean that those who harbor hatred of child killers have somehow achieved a higher level of Godliness than those who succeed in banishing such hatred from their hearts? That seems to be a necessary corollary of the idea that it is heroic to "instruct the young not to hate," and that seems very wrong to me

Where I disagree with Mr Podhoretz is that I think he's confusing Anger with Hate. Anger is defined as "a strong feeling of displeasure and usually of antagonism" on the Meriam-Webster site. Hate "implies an emotional aversion often coupled with enmity or malice ". But further than that, Anger can be cleansing and productive (assuming it doesn't slip into rage, in which case it's senseless and chaotic) . That antagonism towards what happened in Lancaster is appropriate and absolutely necessary. That general feeling that THIS.SHOULD.NOT.HAPPEN is what keeps it from happening (as much). It's what motivates people to try to take steps to make sure it doesn't happen.

Hate on the other hand, is the emotion that eats at the person directing it. It has an ability to slop over on those who may be innocent, but are near enough to the subject to be a target. I can understand why the grandfather would not want his children to hate the murderer. For them to carry hate, anger, and mistrust in their hearts for the rest of their lives doesn't do anything to the murderer. He's dead. Hatred is an acid that eats at the soul, and I'm sure the grandfather mentioned would not want his children feeling that burn forever and becoming secondary (tertiary?) victims of that horrible crime. Nor would you want the hatred for the murderer to affect the wife and children he left behind. They too suffered through no fault of their own.

I understand that Mr Podhoretz doesn't want a generation of sheep blissfully saying "That's ok that the wolf ate Ralph." I just think he's picked the wrong emotion to describe what's needed. Nor can I say that I would not bear hatred if someone killed my child or a friend's child. I'm with Rod. Please God, make the kind of person who could stand over a child's body and still not hate.

posted by MyHusbandRules @ 11:41 AM