We hear the Bible verse that tells us to love our neighbor more times than it's possible to track. People use it when discussing politics, church and everyday life. It is a part of who we wish we could always be. But in order for us to actually become people who love our neighbors, we must re-evaluate the way we say “love your neighbor.”
It seems that, recently, this phrase has been used as an argument based in anger, rather than in love. The phrase is lobbed out at a person as a condemnation, and its overuse has devalued the beauty of what it really means to love our neighbors.
To love in the way that we are called to, we must quote this verse with better intentions than we often do. We remind those around us to love, out of our own love for them. We cannot order others to love people more when we are shouting in their faces.
It is difficult for us to love someone who we believe is utterly wrong. That is the beauty in this verse. If we only loved those whom it's easy to love, there would be no point in telling each other that we must love one another; It would just happen.
But instead of this blind-loving of some of our neighbors who agree with our values, this phrase is meant to be a challenge: it is a challenge to love everyone. If it were easy there would be no need for a constant reminder of this verse. There are people in the world who are especially hard to love. But loving a person does not necessitate agreeing with them.
Love means that we recognize someone’s personhood.
We are all flawed, and we can all be hard to love. If we want to be the kind of people who remind each other to love our neighbor, we must first make sure we are doing what we tell others to do. It is easy to fire off an angry tweet with a Bible verse attached, but it is not easy to recognize that the person at whom we are directing our anger truly believes that they are doing what is good.
Once we recognize the humanity in one another, we can begin to communicate and truly love our neighbor.
