The art of Love

I keep saying I have a problem with the phrase, "Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner." Most of this is based on the fact that I think we stop at the first part of the phrase or even the first word. Getting permission to hate in the name of doing something good has unleashed an awful kind of hell on the world. Let's just have the second part - "Love the Sinner." Wasn't Jesus' commandment to love God and neighbor? There wasn't hate in that phrase. I wonder if we are even capable of separating the two. Perhaps only Jesus is capable of that.

At least, I've not seen it successfully done by any human or any church. How does one hate the sin but love the sinner? Surely we understand that sin is wrong, etc, etc and that God loves the person and not the sin. I've just been getting multiple challenges lately to hate the sin. (It generally begins with, "But the bible says....") Is this our call? Are we called to hate the sin and love the sinner? I don't think I like being called to hate. I recognize that sin is worth hating and I certainly am not promoting it but I don't really think we as humans can actually separate the hate and love. In our task to hate the sin, we hate the sinner. Or as someone else posed, perhaps the problem is that we really, really love the sin and aren't actually capable of hating it. So I'm casting the question outward - can we hate the sin and love the sinner TRULY? I feel like I am called to love - I'm not so sure about this hate thing.