No One Hates the Insignificant

            I saw a quote recently that I really liked.  It said, "The opposite of love is not hate; it is use. Those who hate me at least recognize me as human, a force with which to be reckoned, a legitimate source of ideas. Those who use me consider me nothing more than a means to an end. Those who use me dehumanize me.”

            It seems to me there’s a lot of truth in that.  In an odd way, to be hated can be a compliment.  Think about it:  we don’t bother to hate someone who’s insignificant.  The act of hating someone, while not a good thing, at least recognizes that the one you hate is important. 

Think of the most hated politicians, of either party.  The one thing they have in common is that they have power.  Nobody hates a freshman legislator from the ninth district of Arkansas.  Nobody even knows who he or she is.  The people who are hated are the ones who have power.

            It works that way in sports, too.  What baseball team is hated the most?  The Yankees.  Why?  Because they win so much.  Nobody hates the Washington Nationals.  Why would you?  They’ve never won anything.  It’s not worth anybody’s time to hate them.

            This, of course, explains why the Pharisees and others hated Jesus while he walked the earth.  There were other people, around the time that Jesus was on earth, who claimed to be the Messiah.  Some of them even attracted some followers.  None of them was crucified.  Why not?  Because none of them had any power.  They made a little splash for a while, then they faded away.  None of them was worth hating.

            Jesus was.  Jesus had power.  Jesus had influence.  Jesus had the potential to really change things, to upset the apple cart.  That’s why the Pharisees and others hated him.  That’s why they thought they had to stop him.  If he’d just been a harmless crank, they’d never have bothered.

            So what does that say for the church?  Well, first, let’s look at what it doesn’t say.  It does not say that the church’s goal should be to be hated.  Jesus did not set out to be hated.  It simply was an unavoidable by-product of who he was and what he did. 

It also does not mean that the church’s goal should be to seek power and influence.  Again, Jesus did not seek power and influence.  It simply was the by-product of who he was and what he did.

Jesus did not have power and influence because he sought them.  He had power and influence because he was faithful to God.  He did not worry about what would result from that faithfulness.  That result was not his concern.  Jesus had power and influence because he served his heavenly Father in everything he said and did.  The power and influence were the result of his faithfulness.  Unfortunately, so was the hatred.

I think what that says for the church is that we should not seek power and influence.  Instead, we should always, in all things, seek to be faithful to God.  There may be times when power and influence results from that.  Or, there may not.  That’s not our worry.  Unfortunately, there may even be times when the church is hated because of our faithfulness.  Or, there may not.  That’s not our worry, either.

The job of the church is to be faithful to God at all times and in all circumstances.  What happens as a result of that is not our concern.  If the church is faithful to God, we can trust God to take care of what happens as a result.