Our culture calls many things “hate speech”, but Scripture clearly defines it as any speech which denigrates people’s nature as God’s image-bearers and any speech—or silence—that promotes sinful and destructive behavior. In order to love our neighbors as ourselves, we must pray for them, acknowledge their personhood, and lovingly seek their good by confronting sin when necessary. The world will call us hateful for this, but this is what Scripture calls love—and that’s all that matters.
You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin because of him. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.
-Leviticus 19:17-18, ESV
In our day many apply the term “hate speech” quite liberally. The Left often uses it for any view that makes them feel uncomfortable. Balking at this, the Right often responds by denying the entire concept of “hate speech”. But Scripture must define our terms, so we cannot call everything “hate speech” like the Left, but we also cannot deny its existence like the Right. This post will examine how Scripture defines hate speech.
Denigrating God’s Image
While we may debate what constitutes hate speech, it is clear from Scripture that hateful speech is sinful—and that God takes it very seriously. The tongue is a restless evil full of deadly poison (James 3:8), so we are foolish to underestimate its destructive power: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit” (Proverbs 18:21). We will be either justified or condemned by our words (Matthew 12:37). Thus, Scripture is clear how we must speak: “Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear….Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving” (Ephesians 4:29, 5:4) and “Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person” (Colossians 4:6). Therefore, we are sinning whenever our words are corrupting or foolish; not helpful for building others up, gracious, beneficial, or fitting to the occasion. But sinful speech is not necessarily hateful speech. Jesus links speech to hate in the Sermon on the Mount:
You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
-Matthew 5:21-22, ESV
Here, “you fool” was a serious insult that went beyond mere foolishness to denote worthlessness.[1] While Scripture sometimes calls people worthless, we dare not use such language since we do not know the eternal state of people’s souls. Such language denigrates people by referring to them as something lower than people made in God’s image. It is the most common manifestation of the anger of man that does not produce the righteousness of God (James 1:20): “Terms of abuse are not a heightened form of anger; they are its most obvious and common expression”.[2] That is why Jesus equates such speech with murder:
Jesus establishes a new divine law when He…proclaims in threefold repetition that the term of abuse which is regarded as harmless though spoken in ill-humour is an offence worthy of death….This paradox of unparalleled sharpness is designed to bring home to the hearers the terrible seriousness of sins of the tongue in God’s eyes and hence to save them from having on their consciences the everyday ill feelings towards their brothers which might appear innocuous but in fact poison relationships.
-Joachim Jeremias, “Ῥακά,” ed. Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans: 1964: 975–976.
Therefore, hate speech according to Scripture would be any speech that does not recognize another person as a person created in the image of God. Obviously, things like racial slurs fit into that category, but so do misogynistic or misandristic terms that view women and men respectively as inferior. Since our culture despises marriage, some culturally acceptable terms for spouses would be hate speech according to Scripture, such as a husband referring to his wife as his “ball and chain”. Our culture’s disdain for children also means that several terms for them are actually hate speech, like “rug rats”. For the same reason, I refrain from saying “unborn” or “preborn” in favor of “children in the womb” to avoid diminishing their humanity.
Biblically, hate speech also includes viewing a person’s identity as part of a certain demographic or lifestyle as more important than his or her personhood. The primary and most important identity of any person is as a person—a man or woman made in the image of God. Second is identity in relation to God. We are all sinners by nature and either separated from God because of our sin or reconciled to God by being in union with Jesus Christ through faith. Then—and only then—come other factors, starting with our unchangeable identity as male or female. We err when we allow any other factor of our identity to supersede this hierarchy. Any factor can supplant this identity in our minds, but this erroneous prioritization is especially prevalent in the alphabet abomination where sexual orientation is the locus of identity. They are not gays, lesbians, homosexuals, or anything else but people who practice homosexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9, 1 Timothy 1:10). While our sin nature is an important part of our identity, we must not make our particular sins to be so central to our identity that they supplant our humanity or relationship with God. All of these are hate speech by the biblical definition.
It is equally important to note what is not hate speech according to Scripture. While any term that emphasizes demographics or particular sin over personhood and relationship with God is hate speech, that does not mean that all strong or less-than-complimentary language is hate speech. Scripture is full of sharp word that our culture would consider hateful. Proverbs and Ecclesiastes frequently refer to people as fools, and God Himself often mocks the folly of sinful people. For example, we have previously seen how God calls the complacent women of Samaria “cows” (Amos 4:1). Jesus continues this practice by calling the religious leaders blind guides, blind fools, and sons of vipers (Matthew 23).
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