Reflections on 1 John 3:15

"Anyone who hates a brother or sister is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life residing in him."

What a seemingly bizarre line of thought!  How can hatred be the same as murder? 

Today, we only think of murder in physical terms because we don’t really view human beings as anything more than physical beings.  In John’s day and in his line of thought, though, this was not the case.  He understood that there is a greater depth to what it means to be a human being and that depth is what the later Church Fathers came to call "personhood."  They understood that we are formed through our relationships and shaped by them.  Our inner being is formed through the relationships we inhabit and it is our relationships that have a heavy hand in making us who we are.  Whenever someone cuts us out of their lives and degrades us because of their hatred for us, it will misshape us and can diminish our personhood.  Hatred always wants to undo us.  This is why bullying, for example, is so terrible.  In John’s line of thought, it is equivalent to the murder of personhood.  It seeks to destroy that which is so unique and irreplaceable in the person; their inner being, their unique self.