Originally Posted by Esaias
A few points, if I may:
1. I have found that the Bible often uses terms differently than the way common society does. Love and hate are such terms. People use love, for example, to mean essentially an emotional complacency or pleasure or attraction. While that is certainly one level of meaning, the Bible uses love in a much higher sense, involving choices, favor, actions, support, etc. The same is true of hate, and a host of other terms.
2. David said he hated the Lord's enemies, who hated God, who blasphemed God, etc. We are told to love our enemies. Our enemies seems to refer more to our personal enemies, our neighbors or coworkers etc who happen to not like us or have some personal problem with us. The Lord's enemies are something a bit different, more like organized antiGod syndicates of evil.
One can love one's personal enemies without giving aid and comfort to ISIS, for example, which would technically be treason. One can love one's enemies without voting for gay rights or pro abortion candidates, and while opposing those movements and the people within them.
3. Taking the Bible as a whole, I think a good summary of a proper Christian approach to all this is to oppose and refuse to show favor to those whom the Bible says not to (the sons of Belial, the workers of iniquity, etc) while showing favor to and supporting those whom the Bible says to do so (the brethren, parents, neighbors, etc). We should seek to do good to all men in the sense of not being partial to our friends while ignoring and despising the people in our life who have some kind of personal beef against us or who are just hard-to-like types of personalities. But at the same time we should oppose those who seek to promote evil, thieves, murderers, blasphemers, etc.
It has been said that love really is a conscious decision to favor someone or something, and hate is a conscious decision not to favor someone or something. So then it comes down to who and what we will favor and support, or disfavor and oppose.
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