Early this morning John Podhoretz questioned not only the practicality of forbearing hate of a murderer but, too, the propriety thereof. He quoted Rod Dreher: "Could you stand over the body of a dead child and tell the young not to hate her killer? I could not. Please God," wrote Dreher, one known for effusion, "make me into the sort of man who could."
Podhoretz went on to consider, speaking as a Jew, that "anger can be as righteous as forgiveness." The second isn't counteractive of the first, but vital to it. Without forgiveness anger is not righteous; instead, it is hate. Anger is indignation at an action, the rightful demand for just and commensurate punishment, and a deference of anything else to divine judgment. Hate is the desire to consume and destroy, not just corporally but totally, far in excess of due recompense and mortal authority — and in the same dominative spirit as a usurper or murderer. Reading Iraqi expatriate Zeyad's accounting of the enemy's murder of doctors and scientists, an attempted cautery of Iraq's lettered alongside daily strikes at diligent laborers and proprietors, is enough to stir an incendiary rage. Yet — to what end? If the crime is condemned and the convict's liberty abrogated, what more can be pronounced?
When Christ rebuked Israelites for casting ultimate verdicts, while it was their place to but acknowledge wrong and try according to laws of men, He was restating Jehovah's exclusive claim to vengeance. Hate contributes nothing to what is right. It is followed purely in the service of self.