Loving Others

Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.

One of my favorite things to talk about is loving others. Jesus instructed His disciples to love each other, He instructed the crowds that followed Him to love their neighbors as they love themselves. He lovingly called out Pharisees and zealots when they weren’t showing love.

I think that part is confusing to us. Jesus said, “love God and love others,” and we take that to mean that we force others to love God.

Now, I know that sounds absurd. We can’t make anyone do anything. I wish I could make my kids clean their room. I wish I could make every publisher out there bid on the book I’m working on. I wish I could make Bill Gates hand me his fortune. But I can’t make anyone do anything.

But we try to make people love God.

We do this in a few different ways, but more often than not we end up frustrated because the other person doesn’t love God the same way I love God.

But Jesus told me to love God. He told me to love others. He did not tell me to make sure you love God.

Loving others isn’t a hard concept, even though we complicate it beyond recognition.

Loving others is providing for the widow and the orphan. Loving others is ensuring that every man, woman and child has food to eat every day, a bed to sleep in, a roof over their heads, access to healthcare, access to a quality education, no matter where they are, no matter what they’re doing, no matter what they’ve done.

Loving others means that we are doing everything we can do to show everybody how much God loves them.

And God doesn’t want us to create situations or policies, make decisions, or talk in ways that harm the people around us.

Loving others has nothing to do with the person we are loving. Loving those around me has nothing to do with the choices that they make. It has nothing to do with their past. It has nothing to do with who they were born to be, where they want to go in life, or who they want to be.

For too long, we have put terms and conditions on who we are supposed to love, and for years it has driven people away from Jesus.

It’s time we looked at the people around us and understood that God loves them exactly as they are, and we are nobody to question unconditional love towards every single person.

What would your life look like if you stopped questioning whether the people around you deserve your love? Who would you bring to Jesus if you loved people for who they are, without wondering whether they will return that love?

Let’s love people boldly, and without reservations. Let’s love others like nothing else matters, because in a lot of ways, nothing else does.

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