Loving others

"The second most important commandment is like this one. And it is: 'Love others as much as you love yourself.'"

-Matthew 22:39 (CEV) 

I am really struggling right now with loving others. I struggle when I'm feeling forgotten or left out; I struggle when I'm really annoyed with someone--I struggle almost all the time. And this problem I have with loving people keeps being brought before me by God. I try to read my Bible on a nightly basis, because that seems to be when I absorb and write best, and for two or three nights in a row the verses I happened to flip to had to do with loving others. I find it humorous, as well, because they're all verses I've marked in the past. Apparently I'm too stubborn to learn the lesson the first time around--I'm human.

But being human is no excuse when I claim to follow a faith that is about love, when you boil it down. Colossians 3:12-14 says:

"God loves you and has chosen you as His own special people. So be gentle, kind, humble, meek, and patient. Put up with each other and forgive anyone who does you wrong, just as Christ has forgiven you. Love is more important than anything. It is what ties everything completely together."

 I can put up with people pretty well, I think, but no matter how much I put up with someone, I have a hard time forgiving them their faults. It's the petty things I can't forgive, things like wearing shorts that are a little too short or singing off key or liking the same guy I do. And I hardly ever leave room for change. I peg someone once in a negative light and I have a hard time changing the bulb.

Lately, though, God's been shorting my circuits and leaving my lights nothing to run on, forcing me to change things. Case in point: I was venting my frustrations and un-love of someone to my mother recently, and I realized that my brother was visibly upset that I was doing so. I realized, mid-sentence, that if my big focus lately has been trying to see people in better light, that that applies to all people and not just a certain few. I realized that I needed to close my trap and work on my heart. Let me tell you, though, I am mentally digging my heels in, going down kicking and screaming. I'm human.

All this talk of loving others has reminded me of the chapter Forgiveness in C. S. Lewis's Mere Christianity, where Lewis talks about what it means to love your neighbor as yourself:

"Now that I come to think of it, I have not exactly got a feeling of fondness or affection for myself, and I do not even always enjoy my own society. So apparently 'Love your neighbor' does not mean 'feel fond of him' or 'find him attractive'. . . Do I think well of myself, think myself a nice chap? Well, I am afraid I sometimes do (and those are, no doubt, my worst moments) but that is not why I love myself. In fact, it is the other way round: my self-love makes me think myself nice, but thinking myself nice is not why I love myself. So loving my enemies does not apparently mean thinking them nice either. . . In my most clear-sighted moments not only do I not think myself a nice man, but I know that I am a very nasty one. . . So apparently I am allowed to loathe and hate some of the things my enemies do. . . hate the sin but not the sinner. . . [It] occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life--namely myself. . . There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. . . Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment--even to death. . . Even while we kill and punish we must try to feel about the enemy as we feel about ourselves--to wish that he were not bad, to hope that he may, in this world or another, be cured: in fact, to wish his good. That is what is meant in the Bible by loving him: wishing his good, not feeling fond of him nor saying he is nice when he is not. . .

Perhaps it makes it easier if we remember that that is how He loves us. Not for any nice, attractive qualities we think we have, but just because we are the things called selves. For really there is nothing else in us to love: creatures like us who actually find hatred such a pleasure that to give it up is like giving up beer or tobacco... "

This isn't the whole chapter--and I suggest reading not only this chapter, but the entire book--but I feel like this gives a pretty full picture of what Lewis covered in the last 4-5 pages. Re-reading it just now has definitely hit me differently, now that loving others is a focus of mine. Somehow, I find it easier to think people nice and harder to wish their good. Can you even think someone is nice without wishing their good? I don't think so. Maybe that's why I'm defensive and prickly about loving others: I'd rather punish them by withdrawing my love than wish that they were good.

And all along, I'm bemoaning to myself that I feel forgotten, unloved, passed over, or ignored. I can only receive what I give, right?