I love you.
Several weeks ago, I wrote a reflection on an approach to loving when it is difficult to love. I spoke about the need to root ourselves in love of God in order to help make love of neighbor make more sense. When we build up our relationship with God, it opens our eyes to see those around us in the light of His love.
Today, I would like to take a different angle on how our hearts can be expanded by choosing to love our neighbor. Choosing to love those near to us. Choosing to say “yes!” to love.
Love of God and love of neighbor are woven together in such a beautiful way as we hear Christ describe in Matthew 25:
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’
Loving our neighbor, especially our neighbor experiencing some sort of lack, is an act of loving God Himself. Christ identifies with the poor - with the needy - so when we love those near to us, it can expand our heart and help us to recognize God’s own love better in our lives.
Unfortunately, I think that there is temptation when it comes to the Greatest Commandment: giving into the temptation of abstraction. This temptation arises for many reasons, but I see it most often when diving into the topic of love of God and neighbor.
Abstracting God’s love happens when we resist seeing how lovable we are in His eyes. If someone asked about God’s personal love for me, how likely am I to turn to abstracting or generalizing this experience rather than address it head on. It could be done out of insecurity, woundedness, or out of lack of experience with God’s personal love. While our faith is built on the foundation of a personal God, sadly, there are many believers who simply have never experienced the personal love of the Triune God. So instead of speaking from personal experience or risking taking down the walls to protect our vulnerable hearts, we generalize or abstract God’s love.
The reasons for this abstraction are manifold and as we slowly unpack the reasons for being unable to boldly claim God’s personal love throughout some of these Wednesday articles, it is important that we recognize that it is a problem for many people - a problem that needs to be recognized and spoken to if we hope more people to live out their baptismal identities as His beloved children.
Part of addressing this temptation to generalize or abstract is confronting how it affects our ability to love others. Again, when our wounds become apparent and the walls and shields around our hearts are raised to protect our vulnerabilities, it can become easier and easier to abstract our need to love others. We can make the claim that we are called to love everyone, yet our day to day experiences contradict this effort. Why? Because if we only generalize or abstract love, we are never entering into the nitty gritty challenges of specified love.
What do I mean by specified love?
If we are only claiming our need to “love everyone,” we risk missing out on opportunities to love someone. Love needs to be specific. It needs to be spoken to a particular person or even a particular group of people, but always with specificity. One of the dangers of our current culture is that it misuses and abuses the concept of love to the point that we can claim to love anything. Yet, how much more incredibly powerful is it when we can be specific in our love. Instead of generally loving music, when someone shares a passion for a specific artist and even a specific song by that artist, it unlocks our capacity to love them better. When someone describes in detail their love of food in a specific way - the flavors they love, the kinds of food they enjoy and the memories that come with it - we know their love, we can taste it. When a man proposes to a woman, we can recognize that he may love women in general, but with this beautiful act we see a specific love for a specific person illuminated before our very eyes.
Loving specifically is so incredibly important as it allows our hearts to grow to encompass more and more of the world around us. We may think that we would have to love generally in order to appreciate and love more of what is around us; however, when we practice loving specifically, we can begin to see the world as God sees it - through tender eyes that see beauty in the most mundane of circumstances. Christ coming into this world was out of a specific love for each one of us. For me. For you. We can generalize his actions to the point of decreasing their importance for my own life, but when we reflect on the specificity of love in which his life, death, and resurrection took place, we can come to know and experience the truly personal love our God has for each one of us.
When the temptation to abstract or generalize love creeps into our minds and hearts, it is important to examine what kinds of wounds we may be carrying around that leads us to do this. Do I believe that I am unlovable? Do I believe that our God is incapable of loving me specifically? Do I believe that I am worthless in the eyes of others? Do I believe that another person could really love me for who I am?
Loving specifically unlocks so many beautiful things, but it can also be challenging because it shows the areas of our hearts that may not be ready to be loved or love others in such a dynamic and powerful way. We can practice loving specifically by reflecting on the specific ways our Father in heaven loves us. As we learn to see ourselves through His eyes and find healing in his tender gaze, our own vision can expand to see how lovable we truly are. Our eyes not only are able to focus on the reality of who we are - that is, persons who ought to be loved, but we can also see those around us in the same light.
This specific love, however, is really the call of all Christians. It can be too easy to generalize love to the point that we believe if we are giving to charity, tithing when we go to a church, or posting messages about love online that this somehow fulfills the command to love our neighbor. We can do all of these things and still keep those closest to us at arm's length because choosing to love specifically is hard. We choose to love a specific family member or a friend. We choose to love the person asking us for money as we pass him on the sidewalk. We choose to love our own self - even when the lies that pop up in our mind says to do the opposite.
If we want to be bold in how we love others, we should simply ask God to bring us someone to love today. He will. Sometimes you are the only person that can bring His love into someone else’s life. Each day, begin by asking God to put someone into your life that you can choose to love specifically. At the end of each day, reflect on who God placed in your life and your response to it - did I take the opportunity to love this person or did I avoid it? This incredibly simple examination of our day can reframe how we see and interact with those around us. Instead of reserving love only for when I am ready to give it or receive it, I know now that each person I encounter is another opportunity to share the specific love of God and to receive those I encounter as a sign of God’s personal love for me.
The beauty of loving specifically is that it not only unlocks our hearts to love more people specifically, but also, the more we do it, the easier it becomes. The more we choose the good of loving specifically, the more embedded it is in our lifestyle to the point that we habitually love specific persons in specific circumstances. We don’t even have to start with huge gestures of specific love - we can start small, but the important thing is that we do it. We can’t give into the lies that make us believe that love can be passive - love is always in action, it is always a choice.