So obviously I don’t think homosexuality is a sin and in that context it’s pretty shitty…
But “love the sinner, hate the sin” seems pretty damn important to me? Like, even leaving aside mistakes and moments of weakness and such and just considering explicit, proudly-held views, I can count on one hand the number of people in my life that I consider to have a completely moral worldview. And most of the rest of them are wrong on things that I consider fundamental and extremely important. And yet, here I am, loving them. People can be valuable even if they do bad, and denying that is an act of injustice toward their good traits and will likely leave you bitter and alone. On the other hand, morality matters and failing to acknowledge (to yourself, at least) the flaws in those around you leaves you at risk of sacrificing your and their good traits to their bad ones, and acknowledged or not the problems cause actual harm to your values.
Basically I’m saying I can’t live without “love the sinner” or “hate the sin”. I genuinely love a lot of people who do and believe things I think are awful. I want them to stop and change their views (though that doesn’t mean I berate them or whatever), and at the same time they are more than just their flaws.
In a sense, this is the definition of unconditional love. On the other hand, can some people not truly be awful to the core? There most likely has been someone so despicable that not one person could find something to love.
If peoples’ value is measured in their actions and impact on the world, people can have a certain amount of value if others love them, since they positively impact the world in that way. On the other hand, they may have huge negative value.
Don’t we all? The negative impact of our lives is huger than we realize. In fact, just by spending one day lazing around on a wooden bench in an air conditioned lobby, our negative effect on the world thrives. By this argument, we have no choice but to “love the sinner, hate the sin” or else we would not be able to stand ourselves, let alone each other.
My stance on this one is formed from the rule I developed to make relationships of all sorts possible, and I find it a useful one: My relationship with someone depends solely on my relationship with that person. That is, in my dealings with person Y, I ignore what they do or how they act towards person X, unless this would impact how I deal with person Y. There are people I like who I don’t have great interactions with, and people I have no reason to like that I have wonderful interactions with. I don’t let my general opinion of the person override my opinion of my relationship with that person.
I don’t believe in not interacting with people because I dislike their views, and I think that people should be able to act on their views, so my only standard of judging a relationship is how I think of that relationship.
Obviously how they behave towards others influences my likelihood of inviting the person to join in group activities, and I try to avoid having two people who have issues with each other being in the same room to the extent that I can help it.
I know that some people see this “not expelling people from my life when I am told that they hurt others” policy as supporting those in power against the powerless. Being judged a bad person for not harming others when my social group, or any member of it, is pushing me to harm someone is the sort of thing I would like to be resistant to.
Like fuzziesandutils is saying, from a consequentialist scalar (and especially from a consequentialist absolute) perspective, everybody is a horrible human being, including myself. So I won’t expel someone from my life just because of a tiny extra marginal bit of hurting someone. And that is assuming that all accusations are true. Someone is openly homophobic? Does less harm to humanity than their stance on effective altruism.
I admit that this rule is somewhat self-interested. I developed it so that I would have a general rule that permitted me to have interesting conversations. But I don’t think that it’s a bad one.
I get that some feel that they are obligated not to be friends with someone who is insufficiently progressive, and doesn’t get social justice issues reflexively right. I get that others feel that they are obligated to not be friends with non-christians who might tempt them from the path. I admit that I have lied by omission about the faith that I was raised with, to get along with people who might have changed their views about our relationship based on irrelevant facts about me. I think that it is a worse world when we try to expel everybody we dislike. Now go forth, and be excellent to each other!
Good response. I agree, although there are certain situations in which it can be taken to dangerous extremes. Hypothetical situation: I am best friends with Hitler. Given what he is doing, it would be my duty as a person to stand in his way, and if I like him as a person, I should still try to prevent him from doing anything.
Is it my duty, or acceptable, for me to kill him? On the one hand, I have unique access as a friend. On the other hand, that is major backstabbing.
I think it is totally reasonable to be friends with Hitler if he’s a good friend to you. But you would also be obligated to kill him. As for backstabbing, I don’t think “kill your best friend only if they’re going to cause large numbers of people to die” will create that much of a slippery slope. But maybe I’m wrong.