"...but I say to you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that spitefully use you, and persecute you" Matthew 5:44
In Matthew 5:44 Christ is not adjuring us to avoid active hatred toward enemies. He is commanding us to love actively and fully, by His standard. Christ's standard has no absence of active and passive, inward and outward love toward recipients. To avoid this impossible standard, hate is usually defined by comparison to human standards of love. So hate is thought of as the 'presence of active or passive, inward or outward aggression against recipients.
Consider a Narcissus persona. This person is a functionally absent parent whose mental, physical, and spiritual energy is exclusively expended in directing family members as part-players on his or her life-stage. Though the theatrical show is not offensive to the unsuspecting public audience, the family of a Narcissus live in a soul-sucking nightmare. This persona conceives of every other human as either a cast, crew, or audience member and his or her self-concept and interactions are fully rigid and maladaptive. Sadly, the Narcissus expends all worship and devotion on an adopted persona, whatever god he or she has made of self and he or she expects the same devotion from the cast, crew and audience. Therefore, this rigid and maladaptive persona is only able to use other humans. The public picture, to the naive, would not be described as hate, but in reality it is the complete 'absence of active and passive, inward and outward love toward' recipients and therefore constitutes full hatred.
Everyone has some degree of Narcissus inside themselves. No matter how much by Grace one has come to love God, self, and others, there are area(s) of hate, i.e., the 'absence of active and passive, inward and outward love toward' God, self or others. Christ on the other hand had only active and passive, inward and outward love toward the Godhead, Himself, and those He came to save - no inter-mingled hatred whatsoever.
