People who feel the need to use hostility to defend God’s values are confused about how God works. Jesus said “blessed are the peacemakers,” not the “trouble-makers.” Making “good trouble” emerges from peace-making, showing forgiveness and compassion. “Bad trouble” stems from trying to use violence and hate to promote righteousness—which is antithetical to heaven’s message.
You can identify the direction someone is headed by the fruit they bear. You cannot read their heart, but watching their actions and listening to their words gives you a pretty good idea of what they’re thinking.
Someone who is truly affiliated with God cannot help but bear his kind of fruit in their lives. Paul said, “The Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!” (Galatians 5:22, NLT).
Violence, coercion, and hate find their origin in antichrist thinking and living.
Suicide Bombers for Jesus?
I read an article recently about a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, who believes that it's time for Christians to be as brave and ruthless as radical Islamists who are willing to kill to promote their religion. The implication was that we need Christians who are willing to strap bombs to their bodies in the name of Jesus. How can this guy be a pastor, let alone a Christian?
In one sense he is right. We need to lay down our lives for the sake of the gospel. But it is a message of love, not hate. We don’t lay down our lives for Jesus by hurting others. We do it by loving them—even when it is inconvenient and costly. We sacrifice our prejudices and preferences for the good of others—family, friends, strangers, and even our enemies.
God doesn’t need us to defend him or fight culture battles with infidels and secularists. Our biggest enemies are not atheists or drag queens. Our biggest enemy is us! When we get on our “high horse” and become sanctimonious about our religious faith, we exhibit qualities that are more inline with the devil than God.
Jesus invites us to lay down our lives in humble service and compassion for the very ones we think are destroying Christianity and the world; the very ones who make us angry. He invites us to promote his kingdom with acts of mercy and love, not hate.
The problem with many “Christians” today is they have so politicized their faith and forgotten what it means to be like Jesus that they have created twisted views of Christianity. They have become more known for what they hate than what they love, and have cheapened their faith by linking it to politics.
“This is the message you have heard from the beginning: We should love one another. We must not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and killed his brother” (1 John 3:11-12, NLT).
“Let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love” (1 John 4:7-8, NLT).
Rich DuBose writes from Northern California | pdf version of Promoting Love With Hate
On the web at: richdubose.com. All Rights Reserved © 2025. Join me on Blue Sky @spiritrenew.bsky.social.
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.