Isn’t it troubling, this command to love? The Bible is filled with commands from God to do good work and to be of service, but this command to love, as stated by Jesus, is strictly about what is going on inside a person. Jesus doesn’t say, “Love the Lord your God with all your money and all your projects and all your time”. Paul underscores this idea in his famous “chapter of love,”: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,but have not love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13.1-3). It would seem that what a person thinks is even more important than what a person does. This is a hard thought. Many of us are pretty good at behaving in public, pretty good at keeping the peace, able to remain high-functioning in our own homes. But how do we do at having loving thoughts towards all those irritating, thoughtless people in our lives. We’re supposed to be having feelings for them.
How is that possible? Frankly, I don’t know. This challenge feels like too much. What I imagine Jesus and Paul are getting at, though, is that we need to think differently about one another. We need to remember that this person (pick someone in your mind) has been lovingly formed by God, and that God intends to make this person to be like himself. I think it means that when we look at others we are not to perseverate on their faults. Rather, we are to see their faults mercifully, and we are to perseverate on their strengths and beauties. I suspect there are other ways to learn to love the unlovely (and we are all unlovely). Discovering what they are seems like a worthy quest. In fact, it seems like a requirement.
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