Stopping hateful behavior

Years ago, I dealt with an acrimonious work relationship. Someone was behaving in a way that felt truly hateful toward me, and I couldn’t understand why. I slept fitfully at night and frequently awakened hours early just to study the Bible and to pray for the courage to face another day at work.

When dislike, ill will, hostility, prejudice, misogyny, misandry, or any of the myriad types of hate occurs, it is often attached to some justifying story. I had thought that knowing more of the story behind the malicious behavior might give me special insight to stop it. But my attempts to talk to the person to understand the problem only augmented the aggression.

Then one morning I realized that I could expect God to do more than just help me endure the hate. We have a ready remedy in God, divine Love. Christ Jesus’ healing ministry demonstrated that God, divine good, is the only real influence on us. All of us, as God’s children, are in truth the spiritual reflection of God’s goodness. Recognizing this spiritual reality enables us to overcome evils in any form, including hate.

Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “At all times and under all circumstances, overcome evil with good. Know thyself, and God will supply the wisdom and the occasion for a victory over evil. Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you. The cement of a higher humanity will unite all interests in the one divinity” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 571).

Pondering that passage helped me feel “unstuck.” God is Love, and divine Love has created us spiritually in its own image – not as vulnerable to evil or possessing difficult personalities, but as always expressing God’s powerful goodness and love. We are already equipped by Love to meet any challenge. I held on to that sweet promise as I prayed to know myself and others as God knows us, rather than focusing so much on the problem.

One way to think about “panoply” is armor, or “complete protection for spiritual warfare,” as the Oxford Dictionary puts it. Divine Love cares for each of us so completely that we have built-in armor that protects us from evil. There is no God in hate and no hate in God, the divine all-power – nor can there be hate in God’s reflection. Hate can’t invade, occupy, or even touch us, so complete is our armor of inviolable divine good. All of God’s children are inherently shielded by God’s love from anything that might provoke hate, because hate isn’t an actual power – God, Love, is infinite.

Clothed with this awareness of our spiritual armor, we come to recognize hate as a seeming affront to the presence and power of Love – it has no power to create a clash.

Inspired by these ideas, I went to work feeling strong and equipped to deal with any hostile behavior with love instead of fear. And when an act of hostility occurred that day, it came to me to firmly state aloud that there was nothing but love between us. Only love.

It was said with such certainty that it surprised us both! But the spell of hate broke in that instant, resulting in a complete and definitive healing. From that point on, our interactions were genuinely agreeable.

Willingness to yield to divine Love is a form of spiritual warfare against the false belief that evil is a controlling power. Jesus instructed, “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven” (Matthew 5:44, 45).

We all have God-bestowed authority to defeat hate, to experience and express the highest degree of goodness in our human affairs. Divine Love is the infinite power that provides the wisdom and strength to do this. We are never cornered, never powerless. As the Bible tells us, God “will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid” (Leviticus 26:6).