Deciding Not to Hate

Deciding Not to Hate

What is forgiveness? According to a popular conception, it is deciding not to hate someone having once hated them. Is this possible? It is possible to decide not to act in a certain way towards the person in question, because actions are voluntary; but is it possible to decide not to feel a certain emotion? You may well come to the view that it would be better for you not to hate X, and you may be right, but that doesn’t mean you are free to stop hating X. You don’t decide to start hating someone, so why should you be able freely to stop? It is not a matter of will. You can’t stop believing something by an act of will, or desiring something, or fearing something, or loving someone, or grieving—though these states may change over time. The Christian idea of forgiveness, so understood, is not psychologically feasible, however desirable it may be: you can’t decide not to hate, though you can decide not to express the hatred or act on it. You can decide not to persecute or punish someone you hate, but you can’t decide to cease feeling hatred, any more than you can decide not to feel pain. Hatred is not an action. You can hope it goes away or lessens with the passage of time or the arrival of new information, but you can’t wish or will the hate away, especially when it is entirely justified. You can be condemned to hatred for life with not a damn thing you can do about it. This is an inevitable consequence of evil in the world—seriously bad people cause undying hatred. It is an evil aspect of evil. Will anyone in receipt of the facts ever come to the conclusion that Hitler wasn’t such a bad chap after all and promptly stop hating him? Hatefulness entails hate. Forgiveness is often just not psychologically possible.