Troublesome Topic: Love What God Loves and Hate What He Hates

In the covenant summary of Exodus 20 (what we call the Ten commandments) we see the words “love” and “hate” used. These terms are equivalent to the terms “obey” or “rebel.” If we love the Lord of the covenant we will obey the covenant conditions, if we hate or despise the Lord of the covenant we will rebel against those conditions.

God wants us to be an accurate reflection of who He is, and the only way we can do that is if we stay close to Him and keep ourselves pure from evil. Ask yourself the next time you sit and watch an entire TV program, or a video, “does God love this stuff, or hate this stuff?” We have had the mistaken idea that God is ambivalent about things like TV and movies because it is just time that we spend “unwinding” and is therefore harmless. The reality is that there are usually things in there that God hates because they undermine our spiritual walk, and usually nothing in there that edifies us, therefore nothing that God loves.

Loving what God loves and hating what He hates involves knowing when to fight and when to take flight. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul told the young preacher to “flee from the evil desires that accompany youth” (II Tim 2:22). Paul didn’t say, “stand there in the middle of all that filth and fight it the best you can.” He said, “Get out of there!” Carefully consider that hating what God hates may mean removing this stuff from your home by getting rid of television and movie subscriptions altogether. We cannot eliminate all negative influences outside the walls of our homes, but inside our homes we have more control and we should do what we can to stay as far from evil as possible.

For those who do not want to eliminate TV from their homes altogether, one positive step would be for millions of Christians to band together in pressuring the cable companies to offer a reasonable price for each consumer to choose just the TV channels he wants, without having to receive all the others he doesn’t want. Cable companies can already do this, but they charge considerably more for it than for their packages. We should not acquiesce so easily, but rather we should gather many others to join us in pressuring them to give us the option of choosing. 

This also means we must use our cell phones very purposefully. Having the “whole world” at my fingertips is usually a bad thing. I recommend that believers in Jesus refrain from using their cell phones to get on the internet, except for when absolutely necessary – such as using GPS to find an address, or something related to a business you own, etc. If fighting the temptations that the internet offers is too hard for you, get a flip phone with minimal data. Do whatever it takes to live in harmony with your Lord!

I recognize that some people use the internet and TV only for wholesome and helpful things, but those people are very rare, especially those who are using God’s definition of wholesome and helpful. For most of us, if we have access to everything, we will use anything to entertain ourselves, including some questionable things.

The next lesson in the Full series on Covenants is: We Cannot Fight What We Constantly Absorb