“Mom, don’t be a hater.”

Wow. Strong statement for sure. But before you make a judgement, let me give you a little context.

My grown children were sitting around the table with my husband and me recently, talking about some of the news of the day. Those conversations are usually born by news or memes that pop up on the Facebook feeds of my offspring thanks to the smart phone addiction they share with the modern world.

They usually start like this — “Did you see the post about (insert subject)?”

And in this most recent conversation, instead of saying simply yes or no, my daughter read me the post and I offered my opinion on the particular subject. The phrase “don’t be a hater” is actually a popular throwaway phrase and in this particular instance, it was my daughter’s way of acknowledging the fact that I disagreed with the slant of the post. In this context she could have said jokingly, “Mom, tell us how you really feel.”

What is important here though is the word “hate.”  My generation and my parents’ generation recognized the word hate as an extreme, intense word that signified violence. My teachers and parents and I, too, treated the word almost like an obscenity. Webster’s defines the word hate as “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury … implies emotional aversion often coupled with enmity and malice.”

As kids when we said, “I hate math,” or “I hate broccoli,” we were quickly reminded “You do not hate things or people. You may dislike them but you do not ‘hate.’ ” (Although, honestly, there were times when I really did have enmity or hatred for long division and I know my kids had some malice for those “icky green things.”)

Hate was a hot word only to be used in cases of combating other violence, as in “I hate war” or “I hate violence.”  Expressing disagreement about a particular subject can be intense, but I like to think my reasons are derived from faith, morals, ethics and education, not fear or anger. We can disagree with budget cuts in Illinois and write emails expressing concerns and reasons for opposition, but that doesn’t automatically signify hatred. We can opine without vitriol — or can we?

But on that day, and in that discussion, the word hater, stopped me. My response was, “I am not a hater, I just disagree,” to which my daughter replied, “You know what I mean.” Unfortunately I did. I got to thinking about which was worse, the fact that she used the “hater” phrase or the fact that I knew exactly what it meant.

Upon further reflection and after hearing that phrase used repeatedly in the current culture, I felt some sadness.

When did we get so desensitized to our language and to our understanding of what hate really is and what disagreement really is?

Has our society lost the ability to have a civil discourse about morals and societal issues like the redefinition of marriage, gender manipulation, abortion, religion, etc.?

Or have our modes of disagreement or protest actually been hateful or hate-filled? Scenes of looting, burning cars, flags and epithets; shouting matches and obscenity-laced personal attacks on public social media aren’t exactly shining examples of coexistence or mutual respect.

Do we no longer recognize that disagreement is not always a negative and that it can be a door to opportunity, to reeducating ourselves and to understanding the opinions and values of others?

As a Christian, I worry very much about having my values labeled as hate simply because they are not in line with the popular shift of secular humanist thinking. I worry about losing the freedom of following what my faith teaches because it is contrary to the beliefs of the state.

So with the July 4 holiday around the corner, and our church ready to mark another Fortnight for Freedom, maybe I will say a new and simple prayer for our nation, our church, our faith and our families … “Lord, help us learn to respectfully agree to disagree when and if we need to, and don’t let us be haters.”

God will know what I mean.