Being Hated, but not Hating

How should we respond when we find ourselves the objects of malice?

Title page of Swetnam the Women-hater, credited with originating the term “misogyny.”

This is my latest consideration of a couplet (or a line in this case) from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If.” You can read the introduction to this series here.

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating…

I had no idea how much people hated me until I became active on Twitter.

Growing up, I had the vague sense that some people would not like me because of my religion, or alternately because I was that greatest of horrors for a young person: uncool. I knew there was the occasional terrorist like Osama bin Laden who wanted to kill me for purely political reasons in a vain attempt to change the foreign policy of my national government. But beyond that, I did not imagine that many people hated me, if only because I had done nothing worthy of notice.

As I grew older and more assertive, it was easier to imagine that people might hate me because of my political views, despite or perhaps because of the fact that I was pretty much dead in the center of the ideological spectrum. But my personality was such that I rarely offended people in any serious manner. I made it to thirty years old without experiencing any serious hate directed toward me.

Then, as previously mentioned, I went on Twitter, and there I found the human heart exposed as never before. What I had discovered was something I had known existed, but which I previously considered to be a fringe view in the 21^st century United States: misogyny, which I will define here as hatred of or prejudice against women because of their sex.

I began to see people objecting to things I would tweet not simply because they disagreed with the opinions expressed therein, but because of the fact that I was saying them as a woman. (Yes, they would make this clear.) I began to notice men completely ignoring or instantly dismissing what I had to say, even if I did so graciously. I saw people tweeting that women shouldn’t have the right to vote, that it was the job of husbands to conquer wives sexually, that women had no business writing about anything remotely related to theology, that women were the source of everything wrong in the United States, et cetera.

As the years went by, these comments seemed to appear more often. Particularly after the Covid pandemic, they increased and were expressed by more prominent personalities. I began to wonder how many people in society held these opinions, if any of them were sitting next to me at church, and how far they intended to take their distaste for the female sex. I well recall one time when I had a tweet go viral and was deluged by comments of a misogynistic and antisemitic nature, with one respondent posting a GIF of Hitler that said, “You’re getting gassed.”

Of course, we can debate how much any of these insults really reflect a universal misogyny, but there is no question that I felt a general climate of hate developing, and I felt it directed at me as a member of the female sex. Never before had I had such a clear sense of being hated. I had strongly suspected that some of these people would use physical violence publicly against women were it socially permitted, and that they were probably already doing so privately.

Was this paranoia? Perhaps, but I said to my husband, “A woman is going to get killed. Someday, a woman will be killed.”

I began to understand as never before what black Americans mean when they say they wonder how racism affects all their interactions, if it is the reason they are quietly denied opportunities, if it is the reason they are pulled over by a police officer. You often cannot know for sure. You doubt yourself, mistrusting your own gut. But it was not so long ago that lynchings were common in America, and human nature has not changed. I have no doubt that people out there hate me, even if I struggle to definitively identify them as individuals.

What do I do with these feelings, these fears? A far larger portion of the U.S. population than I would prefer hates me because I am a woman, and these people are expressing it with words, with votes, with money. Not every person who disagrees with me hates me, but there are certainly some who hate me even before I open my mouth. How do I deal with that emotionally?

Kipling urges me not to “give way to hating” when I am hated. He is right to do so, for hate breeds hate in a vicious cycle, and a person given over to hate cannot give and receive love. Hate leads to unhealthy obsessions, breaking our bonds with the world around us. A nation turned against itself in hate cannot move forward in any positive way. It may dissolve entirely.

Beyond that, Kipling echoes the sentiment of the Christian Scriptures. It was Jesus Christ who taught,

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”¹ (Matthew 5:43-48)

I take those words seriously. They are not mere suggestions, but commands. They are not some fleeting notion of an impossible utopia, but characteristics of the eternal kingdom of God. To be like Christ is to love your enemies, for we were all Christ’s enemies before he died for us. And to be a follower of Christ is to pursue Christlikeness.

This means that while I rightly hate misogyny, I ought not hate misogynists. Christ shed his blood for misogynists. They were part of the “world” that he “so loved” when he came down to save them. (John 3:16) Yes, I loath what they say and do, and I am within my rights to stand up for myself and my interests. Loving these people who hate me does not mean tolerating sin or approving of what they do. It means seeking their repentance.

After I tweeted out a warning that hating people is a sin (murder in the heart, as Christ taught us), I received the predictable response, “What about Hitler?” It turned out they were asking this less as a hypothetical moral conundrum and more because they liked Hitler. Nonetheless, the response I gave stands: Loving Hitler means I would have preferred he repented of his sins and received salvation before dying rather than simply killing himself in unrepentance. You can love Nazis as fellow human beings and still support their sentencing at the Nuremberg Trials. Love does not exempt a person from justice. It simply yearns for their ultimate redemption.

I believe this is how I can avoid giving way to hating. To give way is to be given over, possessed. I will not let hate control me. I will keep my wits about me and not allow hateful people to kill the love that exists in my heart—love that is still needed by my neighbors. I hope that the misogynists out there will come to repentance and be forgiven of their sins. I would rather see them redeemed than destroyed. That is what it means to love others even when they hate you. Hate longs for vengeance and wants to see enemies suffer even as they have inflicted suffering.

I am sure I do not always follow Kipling’s dictate perfectly. There are times when I catch myself giving way to bitterness at the very least. But in those moments I pray, “God, help me not to give way to hate.” Righteous anger has its place. Advocacy has its place. But hate has no place in the heart given over to Christ. We must leave the vengeance to God and love our neighbors. It is the only way to live in the here and now.

1. All Scripture quotations are taken from The New American Standard Bible (1995 edition), copyright The Lockman Foundation.