Hate the belief, not the believer

[emilynghiem]

Since I de-converted from Christianity, I kind of adapted my "hate the sin, not the sinner" ideals. I have been through some really terrible things at the hands of religious people, in the name of god, and justified by the religion itself.

I have been thinking a lot about personal responsibility, and versus impaired judgement due to childhood indoctrination.

I'm really struggling trying to find a cross over point. When do stop blaming the religion for a person's wrong doings and make take responsibility of their own actions. When is it okay to hate the believer for their beliefs?

Hi Losty: BTW love the sinner/hate the sin came from Gandhi.
we are not supposed to waste our energy hating anything;
the only "hate" means to "separate" and not entangle ourselves in it.

It is okay to hate when it is part of the natural grief process.
you have to be able to FORGIVE the fact we can't help going through
anger, rejection or hatred, or it's even harder to get past it.

Forgive it first, then you can work through the resentment.
in the end any attached emotion needs to be let go to restore
open minds and not let this bias our judgment. either towards
situations or people.

I'm horrible at the anger stage and don't handle being mad very well.
What helps me speed up that stage is
feeling "compassion or sorrow" for the situation, not anger.
I tend to operate better from that mindset, so I use them to offset each other.

I treat the stages like fire and water.
sometimes we need anger to burn away the impure thoughts.
sometimes we need sadness and tears to wash them away like a river.

so when the fiery anger gets too much, turn on the water to douse it.
when the depression gets so bad you are drowning in self pity,
turn up the fire and get the wet out.

no matter what stage you are in USE that to work through the process of getting rid of negative thoughts and memories.

it's still forgiveness and healing whether you use ideas from Christianity or Buddhism or a mix of both as most people do in some combination.