This message is the essential truth of 1 John, chapter 2, verse 11 which was the subject of my father’s sermon in 1943, during the horrific World War II. His premise stated that humans could not be absolved of hating the Germans and Italians for the war because Americans were sinful people, and hating them did not justify our actions. Yes, I believe that we needed to confront the Axis Powers and defeat them in that dreadful war. The world would have been in a horrible state had these enemies of our freedoms been successful in conquering Europe and much of Asia. Hating, however, creates another set of problems for the one who hates.

As a society Americans are ready to step out into the limelight and claim a preferential treatment because of who we are. We claim the right to as much of the world’s resources as we can garner. We claim the right to press our way of life on other peoples of the world whether they want it or not. We bully other leaders of nations into submitting to our will. And lately we have committed the most egregious sin of all; we have turned inward on ourselves.

We cannot survive as a nation when we attack our own citizens using falsehood, pressure, and pontification to manufacture puppets who will follow doctored truth and tenets of belief. Whether we are liberals or conservatives, independents or disillusioned, we have a moral and ethical obligation to be the best we can be. I am a devout Christian and believe that my salvation is through Jesus Christ, the Way and the Truth. But I will not condemn others who believe in Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, or Islam, or any other religious tenet. Atheists and Agnostics have their beliefs which I do not accept, but the main message from God through Jesus was to love one another as you would want to be loved. When are we willing to follow this simple and yet complex admonition?

I listen to news reports and political rhetoric about how we as a nation need to do this or that in order to survive as a nation. We hear about leaders who espouse a foundation of a doctrine and while committing unethical and sometimes criminal behavior in contrast to their words. We have people willing to commit murder in the name of stopping the “murder” of the unborn. We have people who berate our leaders when those leaders are on the wrong side of their political stance. Name-calling and vilifying people are hateful acts and do not uplift us to God.

In my father’s sermon he presents a problem which envelopes our world today. In 1943 he stated, “Christians who take part in the war are charged with forsaking Christ.” His premise was that men who fought against other men were taught to hate their enemies. He wanted his congregation to understand that fighting a war against “satanic faith” did not endanger our souls by our hating the enemy of our own beliefs. Today, we hear of people who hate abortionists and threaten their lives. We watch as our people are gunned down while speaking to constituents. We listen to inflammatory rhetoric which spews falsehood as a truth. We are guilty of walking in darkness and we know not where we are or where we go. I hope to shed light on the thesis of loving our neighbor as our self and forgoing the entanglement of hating others who are different from us in color, race, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, or any other of the myriad differences we can conjure up. We are all God’s children and I pray for each of us to remember this one simple doctrine: God loves us unconditionally. Let’s not put conditions on loving our fellow human being. What follows the the text of my father’s sermon.

“He that hates his brother is in darkness, and walks in darkness, and knows not whither he goes, because that darkness has blinded his eyes.” 1 John  2: 11

The war which the peoples of the world are now waging one with another, is a terrific burden for them to carry. But more still is it a heavy cross for Christians to bear. There is little that can be said for the war but much oh so much that can be said against it. One tremendous element in it that has bothered me immensely from the very beginning, it’s the doctrine of hate which is being propagated in our armed forces and the feeling of hate that it has aroused in those on the home front.

For a few minutes let us think of this great problem that is enveloping the world. Christians who take part in the war are charged with forsaking Christ. Our consciences answer, however, that we cannot forsake men, the children of God –to death. We have to fight side by side in the shedding of blood, to crush the evil forces and make the world a fit place for men again.

But as we fight we are in danger of being brutalized. Of necessity we must travel a rough road. It will coarsen us, make us callous, rob us of our fineness and respect for others if we do not guard our souls. But how, we ask, are we going to protect the most sacred thing that man possesses? How? First, by recalling why we fight. We are fighting to the death, not to slay men, but to overcome their armed satanic faith which would wreck the very ground of all right and peace. If this be so then we cannot and will not hate.  And for this reason we must keep alive, where it can live, in our hearts, our homes, our work and our nation every gentle, noble, peaceful thing that we know.

Second, we will direct our thinking into right channels by recalling, even while we fight, that we hate war and that God hates it also. War must be a bitter cross we carry in order to save our age. The logic of this is not simple, but that conviction of it is clear to our consciences and our souls.

Noted publicists are insisting that America will fight this war with all its vigor only when our people to hate. If the Christian religion is true, if it contains the fundamental elements for right living then these writers are mistaken. The conditional is really unnecessary in that sentence because we know that our faith does contain all the factors of truth. We know that hate will not only harm America but that it is very likely to lose the war for us.

We shall lose what we are fighting for if we hate, because the worst part of the spirit of the enemy will have conquered us. We are fighting against the very things that hate reveal. If we are not then we might just as well throw up our arms, and succumb to the forces of evil. We are fighting against a spirit which reveals itself in the hatred of Jews, Poles, and other subject peoples. We are fighting against a spirit which has corrupted and corroded the finer spirit of the German people. Is it reasonable that we should seek to foster in our own people the spirit against which we are fighting?

Let no one think that we can turn hatred on like a faucet and then turn it off easily when the war is ended. This is a moral universe in which nations reap what they sow. If hatred has corrupted the Germans, it will do exactly the same to us. People who are filled with hatred are not good citizens, for their vindictiveness can too readily be shifted from one group to another, to groups within our own country.

We shall lose what we are fighting for if we hate, because a vindictive spirit will cause us to write another unjust treaty. Hatred will cause us to do what in our saner moments we know we should never think of doing. Hatred is a dark evil alley where men stumble and fall.

The root of hatred is egotism. Whether directed at someone next door or at another nation, it says in effect, “They did this to me, and now I am going to get even.” “Nobody can do this to me.” Revenge, vindictiveness are rooted in a self-centered attitude.

When we look about us we see that those who hate are usually those who simply sit in the great amphitheater and watch the scene of war in the arena below. Those who have paid a price are the very ones who are maintaining and preaching the principles for which we are waging battle to the death. Our good friends the Rolls have given us an example by which to set our thought and lives. They have paid the supreme price. They have given the dearest thing they possessed and yet they still live and preach the doctrine of love and brotherhood. They are true Christians. Christians are people who are trying to do, not their own wills, but the will of God, — to rise above their own interests, to see God’s plan for all men. We believe that our proud and selfish wills must be converted, and that we must seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness. We are asked to do away with the self-centered spirit, the soil in which vindictiveness grows. We must learn not to say, “They did this to me, I’ll get even.” That spirit held by men and nations is the source of endless and bitter conflict. It is the very source of the whole mess that we are in today. We must learn to say instead, “In this tragic hour of the world’s history what is the will of God for me and for His World?”

A hatred rooted in egotism will leave a dirty taste in the mouth of America. In the past she has fought for freedom and for the good of all men. She has fought battles for the Lord in the spirit of Washington, Lee, and Lincoln in our best tradition. We must do the same now.

Another reason why we must squelch the teachings of hatred and vindictiveness is because they flourish within the self-righteous. A common argument that one such person takes is: “Here I am a good, just, innocent person, and those evil men have done this to me. The conclusion follows that, since the attackers are evil and the person attacked is good, hatred is a reasonable attitude. We hear so many of our American people reasoning just this way. Such foolish talk.

Foolish, because anyone who knows any history at all knows that America must stand before the judgment seat of God for the many sinful acts we have committed as a nation. Oh, we have been and are far from being good. We have robbed the Indians, we have exploited the Negroes, and we have lived in a very selfish and careless manner. We bear a good deal of the responsibility for this war just because of the attitude that we took toward the foreign powers. We failed to do our international duty, we did not face the evil confronting us but rather we appeased it. We are far, far from being innocent.

We are not, we hope and feel, as evil as the Nazis and the Fascists but at the same time we are joined with all men in our common sin. Before God’s throne we too must stand and ask for forgiveness.

What a difference this attitude and knowledge can make in the spirit with which we view our enemies and set our war aims. We shall realize then that we are not Pharisees fighting outcasts; but that we are sinners fighting sinners.

From all this we see that only with love and forgiveness can we go out and complete the task at hand. Only then can we bring men to the realization that Christ is the truth, the way, and the life.

To forgive does not mean to condone: it does not mean treating lightly the terrible things that have been done by our enemies. That would be cheap and easy-going, and would not tally with the great truth that God hates sin.

St. Augustine said, “So ask that thou art asking, not that men may perish, but that these their enemies may perish. For if thou pray that the men may die, it is the prayer of one wicked man against another; and when thou dost say, slay the wicked one, God answers thee, which of you?”

For the very fact that we are all sinners, we cannot ask that the wicked one be slain. Rather we must love so that we can raise ourselves to God and help our enemies then to raise themselves also. Only with love can we know the way and only with love can we travel that way.

“He that hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness, and knows not whither he goes, because that darkness has blinded his eyes.”

The Reverend Norman Stockwell – Given on August 15, 1943 at Gooding, Jerome, and Shoshone, Idaho.