Question about seperating unacceptable behavior from the person

[clydefrand]

who displays the behavior.

I heard today from a psychologist, and have heard this from the likes of Jerry Falwell and others, that one should dislike the behavior but not the person.

How can a person's evil behavior be seperated from his person? The person is responsible for what he/she has done

His take on this today is in essence that a person is just a person. It's ones thinking/behavior that we judge. Falwell has said something to the effect, when talking about gay/lesbian relationships, that he loves the sinner, but hates the sin.

Of course I don't agree with Falwell's assessment of gay/lesbian relationships.

Now, I know that if you're teaching a child "right from wrong", you might say to him or her, I don't like your behavior, but I love you and want you to do what is right.

That example above doesn't work when speaking of people like Hitler and Bundy, and Jeffrey Dalmer, etc. not in my mind anyway. Thanks in advance for enlightening me on this subject. Fran

[silverweb]

1. Good question.

Lots of us struggle with that in regard to our Right-Wing, B*-supporting family members and friends (if we have any of the latter left).

[wli]

2. it's a pretext

The logical conclusion of the argument is taking steps to "prevent the behavior" against the individuals they supposedly "don't hate."

[Lindacooks]

3. I sure do see a lot of hate from those right wingers

but I don't see ANY love.

All they do is hate. When have they ever, EVER, mentioned love in connection with gays/lesbians? All you see are signs "God Hates F&*&". NOTHING about love.

[raccoon]

4. I've always wondered about that too.

It's hard for me to separate it from "accepting unacceptable behavior."

"That example above doesn't work when speaking of people like Hitler and Bundy, and Jeffrey Dalmer,"

And to me, it doesn't work when speaking of abusive family members.
Or other abusive people.

[Igel]

5. My wife says our toddler is "good"; I say that he behaves well.

I don't know if he's good: if he's good, it means I'm ascribing goodness to him, and how much bad a good person can do and remain good is something I can't say, by and large, without lots of evidence.

I lack the evidence. I also lack the evidence for most people, any one of which does a lot of good things and a lot of bad things. Which set expresses something essential about the person? At what point can I set back and evaluate the person's inner "essence"?

This is bad enough in secular terms, when you're trying to hire or fire somebody for a job, or evaluate a "candidate for spouse-hood", or the like. But in religious terms, at what point can I judge someone? Should I? Obviously at some point I must make some judgment, but should be it a global judgment ("He's a bad person") or a local judgment ("He's a bad for the position of DA")?

There's also the risk, esp. with kids, but not only with kids, that the judgment will be internalized. If Jake over there made a bunch of mistakes and tries to fix his life, but he's got a big sign around his neck saying "bad person, racist, criminal", he's going to have a lot harder time dealing with society's judgmentalism than his own flaws. If a kid hears that he's "stupid" for the first 3 years of school, or he's "a bad apple", he's likely to act on those judgments.

For Hitler and Stalin, Mao and Bundy, McVeigh and many others, it gets harder. It's easier to label somebody with an across-the-board judgment when they're dead or thoroughly dehumanized (which is one of the results), because it's not likely to affect their behavior in the least. But having read up on Stalin, I find that he wasn't all bad. He was certainly twisted and warped, to be sure, and confused good behavior with very bad behavior (which I consider part of my personal definition of "evil"). But for secular purposes, calling Stalin a "bad person" fits well enough; for purposes of judgment to hell-fire or whatever the divine retribution is, I'll leave that aside as irrelevant.