The core Christian teaching is that God and his church love the sinner and hate the sin.
That involves judging. The argument that we should condemn and punish the sin not the sinner is a strange one.
Judging a person as a sinner is often disguised as condemning only their actions, not the person. Yet, hypothetically, if you could eliminate someone who does wrong (X) and replace them with a better person (Y), you would completely erase X—denying them the right to exist.
Judging the sin is effectively judging the sinner.
Authority figures routinely judge people through punishment:
Teachers judge children when disciplining them.
Parents do the same.
The law punishes wrongdoing.
All may claim to “love the sinner, hate the sin,” equating love for the person with justly punishing their actions.
Refusing to see the person as evil undermines concern for virtue:
Encouraging honesty, humility, or other virtues becomes irrelevant.
Those who claim to “judge the sin, not the sinner” actually see sin as inseparable from the person—it defines the sinner.
The actions are only a problem because of what they reveal about the individual.
Calling a person evil is hate speech:
To eradicate evil, logically, evil people should be destroyed—or at least regrettably tolerated if elimination is impossible.
This does not justify judging sin instead of the sinner; it only shows some use that excuse out of fear or desperation.
The danger of labeling people as evil does not make evil people a fiction.
“Judge sin, not the sinner” stems from fear and intolerance:
Supporters are suspicious of those who confront the truth.
Historical figures (Stalin, Moses, King Herod, God) demonized as evil are attacked by hypocrites claiming to “love the sinner and hate the sin.”
Impersonal judging is worse than judging people directly:
Focusing only on sins risks punishing people more than they deserve.
Both sin and the sinner are treated as objects, not human beings.
Sin is tied to law and punishment, which always target the person, not just the abstract “sin.”
Hating sin personifies it, making it as harmful as hating a person:
People perceive hatred of their sin as personal hatred.
The hate directed at “sin” becomes as poisonous and destructive as hatred directed at the person themselves.
Hating sin is often disguised as love for the person:
The sin is effectively treated as a separate person.
In reality, when someone’s sin is hated, the believer sees two entities—the sinner and the sin—and ends up hating both personally.
It Is Worse to Hate a Thing Than a Person Because:
Hate, by definition and experience, is a person-to-person phenomenon. You are lying to yourself if you say you hate sin and love all the sinners who commit them.
Some say the reason you hate others is because you view them not as people but as things—you dehumanize them in your head.
Hating a sin as a force, not as a person, is practice for hating people.
If you hate a thing intensely, you will soon start hating people. Hating someone’s bad habit often leads to hating the person. We are programmed to hate and fear people, not abstract sins.
It is irrational to try to hate a thing such as sin. Hate poisons you and can only be sustained by creating new hates. This self-hate fuels hate for others.
If you need to hate a person, turning a sin into a person in your head is trying to satisfy that need. If it doesn’t work, inventing persons to direct hate at is a sign of a twisted, vindictive mindset.
Why Judge Sin, Not Sinner?
Some say you cannot hate the sinner with the sin because you are a sinner yourself. But you can hate yourself as well. If you can hate sinners as the “hate sin” doctrine suggests, then why not love yourself despite your sins and hate everyone else for theirs? You cannot love the sins of others just because you are a sinner yourself—the Christian “gospel” makes that clear.
Some say it is terrible to judge others. But it is really the only way we believe in. If judging others is so terrible, then it follows that if there is a choice between judging yourself or others, you should judge yourself. Degrade yourself to spare others. Better to sacrifice one for many. Better to judge yourself, for at least you are you and can judge yourself better than anyone else. The ban on judging thrives on self-hatred—and self-hatred is no basis for love.
Some say you cannot hate the sinner with the sin because you cannot judge what extent a person’s guilt is. You don’t know how guilty a person is or what pressures they were under when they sinned. Nobody tells everyone everything about themselves. But is it really comforting if I am a sinner and I know that people hate my sin—and therefore me—even though they cannot be sure of the specific act or its degree? Their love is limited, reserved, or conditional. A sin is to be hated for what it is; the degree of sin has nothing to do with it.
Blackmailing Those Who See Through It
Christians say they don’t judge people, only sins. Yet they claim that if you sin seriously, you identify yourself with the sin and make a complete choice for evil against God. Some say everyone in Hell is there because the sinner cannot be separated from the sin—that sin reveals the sinner—so hating sin is hating the sinner. This doctrine attempts to blackmail and scare people into accepting the lie that you and God can love the sinner and hate the sin. If the lie is exposed, religion loses its purpose and becomes passive-aggressive hatred for sinners. "Judge sinners, not sins" is an attempt to manipulate. It is not about real love. You cannot even love the saint if you think: “If you sin, I will pretend to judge your sins, not you, to feed my hypocritical ego.”
Judge Sin, Not Sinner: A Form of Moral Relativism
The absurdity of the doctrine of loving sinners and hating sins drives its victims into moral relativism—the notion that right and wrong are mere social opinions. It is, in fact, moral relativism itself, though in denial. One religion creates moral codes, another sets up contradictory ones. This fuels relativism.
It Backfires
If you judge a person as seriously ill, nobody cares; it may save a life. If the priest thinks you are committing hell-deserving sin and is wrong, many would say, “Better that than him saying nothing and maybe you go to Hell.” Misjudging you is justified if it warns you.
Suppose you judge the sin, not the sinner. What if you cause great distress while pretending to hate only the sin? The rule applies to you: people should take the most charitable view, saying, “They judge sins, not sinners, but go about it poorly.”
If someone persecutes you for race or religion, you might say, “They judge our sins, not us personally.” Why, then, is “love the sinner, hate the sin” nonsense? There is something more judgmental about hurting someone for what they do than for who they are. The rule creates a hypocritical, dangerous mindset: personal hate becomes the worst sin, not murder.
If all sins are equally vile, “innocent until proven guilty” loses relevance. That principle endorses judgment of the person and fairness.
Finally
“Judge sin” is a different way of saying “judge the sinner.” There is no real difference. Only extreme pride (humility can be a mask for pride) enables a person to fool themselves that they judge sins but are too good to judge sinners. Claiming to love sinners while hating their sins is pride disguised as virtue.
Hurting sinners to punish sin is cruel. You may as well hurt the innocent, for you tell yourself they are innocent.
If there is no God, wrong acts make you a wrongdoer. If there is God, it makes you a sinner—worse. Those who claim “judge the wrong but not the wrongdoer” have more right to judge the person than those who say “judge the sin, not the sinner.” Judging the person is less vicious than hiding behind sin.
To judge a person is to accuse them of intentionally becoming evil. It is about risking harm to the person.
If X or Y must die and you must choose, you choose the one who will unintentionally do evil. You are worse if they do evil purposely. Those who judge sin, not the sinner, see themselves as harmless—but they are not.
Bad means that which should be willed out of existence. Religion says you should feel that evil should cease. Calling someone bad is hate speech—it implies the person should cease to exist. You cannot truly hate a thing; only a person can be hated in a meaningful sense.
Helping a person resist sin is judging them. To judge a sin while denying the sinner has anything to do with it is wanton hate disguised as virtue. How can such a person claim to love sinners and hate sins?
Hypocrisy often describes a person with double standards. A better definition: pretending to follow a standard you do not follow. To love a good person is to hate a bad one; love and hate go together. To say you hate judging people is to admit you hate people who judge righteously.
Seneca stated: if you judge one man as evil, you must also judge human nature as no better. Imagine his view of those whose judgments are a manure heap covered by snow—friends of hypocrisy. An honest bigot is better than a sneaky promoter of bigotry. THE WEB www.shilohcommunitychurch.org/love_sinr.htm TRUE OR FALSE? GOD LOVES THE SINNER BUT HATES THE SIN, FALSE, Errol Hale www.ffrf.org/fttoday/back/hatred.html With Perfect Hatred by Dan Barker http://www.godhatesfags.com/ A Baptist anti-gay site