The year 2020 proved that it is so hard to love people. From the murder of George Floyd broadcasted on our smartphones to isolating from our friends and family with a deadly virus looming over our heads at every turn, everything seemed pretty hopeless. People who claimed to be followers of Christ began to talk less about love and more about resentment. Social media lit the match under the hatred and bitterness in everyone, and it spread like wildfire.
A song that was continuously stuck in my head throughout quarantine was “The Ballad of Love and Hate” by The Avett Brothers. This song personifies Love and Hate as lovers who have been apart for some time. Many people believe that love and hate are complete opposites, but this isn’t the case. The complete opposite of love and hate is complacency. It took bingeing “Desperate Housewives” with my dad during isolation to understand that lesson.
In “The Ballad of Love and Hate,” Love is described as gentle, patient and kind while Hate is described as being a screaming, angry and lonely toddler. Throughout last year, I felt myself relating more to Hate with every tragic event unfolding, one after another. Seeing the way people blatantly ignored the Black experience and chose to be complacent filled me with rage. The disrespectful comments and posts arguing over the Black Lives Matter movement broke my spirit. For months, I decided to reject Christianity completely because of it.
I couldn’t understand how God would allow George Floyd to be murdered, so I was filled with anger. I couldn’t understand why God’s chosen people would be so quick to shut down Black men and women coming forward about their experiences with racism, so I was filled with bitterness. I couldn’t understand how God would allow a pandemic to stop our lives with no foreseeable end, so I was filled with loneliness.
So when I listen to The Avett Brothers song, I can’t help but relate to Hate. He’s serious when he’s around others, screaming when he’s alone and lonely no matter what. Then there’s Love: the soaring and singing blue-eyed beauty. When I listen to the song, I always see Love as the people I admire. I want nothing more than to be able to see life through Love’s rose-tinted glasses. It makes me wonder: How can there be a balance between love and hate?
At the end of the song, Love arrives home and is waiting patiently for Hate. He eventually comes home and apologizes for his rash behavior to Love. She doesn’t accept the apology and instead apologizes for being gone. “I’m yours and that’s it, forever. You’re mine and that’s it, forever,” she says.
The balance between love and hate is simple. When we are passionate about human life and angry about injustice, we uncover our primary value in one another. We must realize that our primary value rests in the fact that we are human beings. We will mess up, make mistakes and embody hate while also empathizing with one another to embody love. The balance is to love one another through our actions and words because we are human beings and hate the evil that we bring into the world through our imperfections. We must stop striving to be right and instead strive to love and hate.
