My title may strike some as expressing an un-Christian sentiment. Surely, Christians should like everyone, shouldn’t they? What does it mean to “like” a person anyway? I would say that in loving we don’t have to like everything people do or say or think. We don’t have to like that which is evil or that which offends the Spirit within us. We don’t have to smile at something we’re convinced is wrong or which we have no affinity for. We have the dignity and right to have our own views, tastes and preferences. If I say I don’t like your music I’m not committing a sin. However, we are required and commanded to love.
MAN ON THE MOON. I love solitude and always have. Give me an open stretch of land with no evidence of humanity on it and I’ll be happy there endlessly. In my late teens I had the dream of living on the moon, alone! What kind of thinking would lead someone to have such a wish? In my case, I’m pretty sure it was because of the way I’d been treated as a youngster. Being the baby of the family and having bright red hair and freckles, I was the butt of everyone’s jokes. I simply didn’t like how people made me feel. They picked on me and expected certain things of me; certain behaviours, attitudes and tastes, when all I wanted was to be left alone to be me. I believe God either made me into a loner for HIs own purposes or used what I was to express certain things to the world. A blog about truth must, in our world of herd mentality, be written by an independent thinker: someone who has been shaped to think outside the box the world attempts to squash us all into.
I struggle to like people. Some of my dislikes may be considered by most to be understandable. For example, I don’t like to see numerous people walking around a food store in pyjamas they’ve slept in and often haven’t washed for weeks if ever. On the other hand, I struggle to accept things which to most are perfectly acceptable, and even ask myself sometimes how I can be so judgmental. Were I to make a list of things I don’t like in the arena of human nature it would be far longer than a list I may make of things I do like. I’ve told the Lord a number of times that the only mistake He ever made was to create people: He should have stopped short at the animals.
DIFFERENCES. I suspect that under the surface most of us are really the same in this regard. In our modern culture we’ve become more and more distant from each other. We have less in common, so that many of us don’t even know the names of our neighbours. We don’t like what they wear, or what they drive, or what kind of music they listen to, or who they vote for, or many other things about them. We think that our way is the right way to live and think. Be honest – I think you know what I mean.
Besides God’s command that we love Him, love for each other is the greatest commandment. It’s what Christianity is all about; more so than being “right” about everything. “God so loved the world that He gave His only son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life”. John was extremely pointed about the subject of love in his letters. He said, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love”. And it’s not just the people we like that we are to love, but those others also. Didn’t Christ say, “Love your enemies”?
Failure to love, then, is sin, and the name of our God is often slandered with the reason or excuse that we Christians are unloving. Even inside the church we see divisions, cliques and snobbery. We think we’re better than those people over there because we live in a certain part of town and they don’t, or because we’re educated and they aren’t, or because we have all the right ideas and theology and political views. Without doubt it’s tempting to turn our noses away from some people for a multitude of reasons which we think are righteous and excusable, when in truth we are disobeying our Lord’s command.
TRUE LOVE. We can often make the mistake of saying or thinking that we love someone when we don’t. God knows the difference. True love is shown in loving actions, in kind words, in smiles and warmth, in caring, in forgiveness and second chances. These things are the measuring sticks for true love. Love is not letting someone walk all over you, and it is not allowing someone to believe a lie: love is telling someone the truth. The words “love” and “sex” are not synonymous.
OVERCOMING OUR OWN HUMAN PRIDE. Since this is the case how are we to fulfill the command of our Lord Jesus Christ and of our God? It’s easy enough to love people who are nice to us, who benefit us, and who impress us in some way, but how can we love people we really don’t like or even people we despise? I have to confess to not being an expert in this matter. I’m as fallible as anyone else, and there have been many times in the past when I’ve treated people according to my own fallen nature and not by the leading of the Spirit of God within me. I do, however, have some idea of how to get it right, and in those woefully few times that I did there were magic moments and spine – tingling results.
Our priorities determine how we interact with people. If we’re seeking our own betterment and goals we are far more likely to live like any unsaved person, and we fail to love as God wishes us to. If, however, we have our God’s will uppermost in our mind, we are far more likely to be thinking about how to please Him in any given situation. This is what Paul calls, “walking in the Spirit”. It has nothing to do with speaking in tongues or falling over: the question is, is our will submitted to His will? Are we in love with our God and His Word as written in the Bible?
Secondly – and this has been a powerful tool for me – we need to consciously apply our minds to any human interaction. I’m not talking about effort or “works” here: Jesus would never have instructed us to love if we had no human choice in the matter. Our minds are to be filled with the Word of God. The Word tells us to love freely. Our conscious minds are vitally linked to our spirits, which should in turn be linked to the Holy Spirit of God.
MIND OVER MATTER. Therefore, we have to literally tell ourselves to love, within the context of God’s Spirit who is in us (if we have given ourselves to Him in accordance with the gospel of Jesus Christ). This is how we can do it: by remembering Christ’s love. He died, says Scripture, for the whole world. Not that everyone is automatically brought to salvation by His sacrifice: our will is still required. When we realize that Jesus died for all we can be open to the movement of the Spirit within us to love even those we don’t like.
FOCUS ON THE SUBJECT. The next time you see or speak to someone you are tempted to treat with contempt or disrespect, remind yourself that you are no better in God’s sight than he or she. Jesus Christ died for that person just as He died for you. He loves that person every bit as much as He loves you. He wants that person to be in his heaven just as much as He wants you to be there. He loves them, and were He to only choose those who looked or acted a certain way, He may just as well reject you as them. However, HIs love is unconditional. His will to forgive is eager and almost limitless, and were He to only choose those who were good and righteous and attractive, you and I wouldn’t make it into heaven either. Jesus is Mercy and Love: how can we fail to extend that mercy and love to other people? We must not.
Look at the other person – perhaps the one you like the least – through the eyes of Christ, and remember that you are no better in God’s sight than they are, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God”. If you want God to forgive you, you must also forgive them.
God has created humanity in His own image, and in human flesh we see a remnant, a glimmer, a sample, a representation of the glory of God. What an honor; what a blessing it is to have the opportunity to help direct someone towards the living God by loving them, even when they don’t deserve it.
Fuel for Faith, Food for Thought 