Anderson Cooper on The Bachelorette

I applaud calling the show out for what it is, but was amused and bemused to see the backpedaling statements that she's "a lovely girl," "mazel tov" to the couple, and that it's "fun."

Here is a quote from Fr. Justin Frederick writing in The Confessor's Tongue:

The Virtue of Hatred

Abhor that which is evil, cleave to what is good. Romans 12:9

The Bible commands us to hate, and it is not found in the Old Testament, but the New! This hatred is both a virtue and a necessity for us if we are to live a Christian life.

We generally think of hatred as a sin, and, when directed against man made in God’s image, it is. Yet hatred is not something that has to be completely rooted out of our souls; it merely needs to be directed against the proper object.

In last week’s epistle from Romans chapter 12, St. Paul commands us to “abhor that which is evil.” The Greek word apostugeo contains the root verb “to hate” with a prefix which adds intensity to that hatred.This hatred, properly translated as ‘abhor’, is not a passive dislike; it is an active, violent hatred and detestation. The Latin word from which we get ‘ahbor’ means ‘to shudder’ a violent, involuntary reaction to something with which we desire no close contact, for example, the sound of fingernails on a slate blackboard.

This violent reaction of intense hatred is to be directed against that which is evil. The Greek word for translated as ‘evil’, poneros, used 80 times in the NT, is translated as “evil or wicked” in all but five occurrences in the King James. Satan, the devil, is “the evil one” from whom we ask deliverance in the Lord’s Prayer. Things that are evil harm and oppress us and others and corrupt our souls and faculties so that they do not work as they were created to work. God is good, kalos, and makes us such while our enemy is evil and seeks to make us like himself.

Thus we are to hate both the devil and his evil works; we are to hate the corruption that the devil works in human lives through sin and death. We are to hate sin, not merely hating it but abhoring it.

But all too often we do not abhor sin; rather we like it or even love it. Rather than shuddering before it in revulsion and fleeing from involvement with it, we toy with it, play with it, entertain ourselves with it, and as a result, we live lives far short of the potential God has given us—simply due to failure to abhor evil.

When I was on vacation, I had the misfortune of being exposed to two episodes of The Bachelorette on television. It was repulsive to see a young women set up with first four then three young men, to ‘date’ them in exotic, romantic locations far removed from the reality of day to day life, to kiss them, to sleep with them—all on national television, all in the name of finding ‘true love’ and the man she should pick to marry. She had no clue as to the real nature of love or on what basis she might make a wise, rational decision about what man would be good to marry, and so could offer no guidance in the matter to a viewer. Yet this most unworthy material is offered to us as ‘entertainment’ and consumed ravenously by millions on the edges of their seats!

Such ‘entertainment’ is unworthy of a Christian. If there is anything of Christ’s life in us, such things must cause our souls to shudder and turn away. To hate and despise such things is both virtuous and necessary for Christians to protect us from what will harm us. And if we find our hearts sinfully drawn to such things, let us ask God to strengthen us in the virtue of hatred of evil!