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“If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.” (1 John 4:20-21)I believe it was just yesterday that I was saying I can be reconciled to God no problem, it's people that I can't stand? (I paraphrase) Apparently, if I can't stand people, I can't stand God. If that isn't a direct hit to the gut, I don't know what is.
Wow, does this verse puzzle me... it doesn't say we don't love God, it says we can't. We are unable to love God if we don't love others. How can this be?! God is good. God is just. God is loving. God is merciful. God is beautiful. God is without sin. So, umm, helloooo??? Doesn't it seem entirely likely to love someone like that (whether we can see him or not) regardless of whether or not we love people? People are mean, unfair, hateful, oppressive, and ugly (I don't mean physically). People sin.
I just don't get it. I can not love God if I don't love people. I am going to wrestle with this one. I really am. It must be about seeing others the way God sees them. But how do we see beyond all our sinful natures to see what God sees? In order to love another person I have to get past not only my own crud, but their crud as well? Hoo-boy. How do we love the unlovable? ...Flowing through my head right now are all these cute catch-phrases to answer this question: "by the Spirit," "with prayer," "it's not us, it's God through us"...
Gag. Sorry, folks... but seriously. Gag. The answer for me must be found by going deeper than that. My devotional today, on a different verse, yet totally the same message (coincidence??!) stated, "Truly, if our love for God is genuine, it cannot help but flow into a love for people. "
So, which comes first??? Our love for God, or our love for people? We can't love God if we don't love people, we can't love people without genuine love for God. Hmph. I am totally stumped.
For me, I really hope it is that loving God helps me to love people, otherwise... I might be in big trouble.
2 comments:
Well, there are alot of people who are physcially ugly as well. I think it's easier to love someone we haven't seen. We aren't faced with their issues or we can easily sluff them off. "Show me the philosopher who can passively endure a toothache!" - Much Ado About Nothing. People around us can be 'toothaches' we HAVE to deal with because we can't ignore them and we can't shape them into our own image. God is omnipresent and very involved in our lives but sometimes we can pick and choose what and when we deal with what God is trying to teach us. I've found that when God literally at time hits me over the head (remind me to tell you the story when God finally made me meet with him but it took massive sunburn rain and peeing blood to make it happen. Man, I stupid and stubborn) is when we are more readily choosing to meet, deal and listen to Him. Basically, God had to become a "toothache" for me to meet him as only a physically present entity (like another person) can be.
Your comments about it being easy to love God because he is perfect remind me of that horrible song from the 80s(?):
"Looooooving youuuu is easy 'cause you're beautiful (Doo Duh Doodle Doo Dooooo)."
The natural, human way of understanding love is that we love things which are appealing to us. But that is a completely selfish form of "love."
Real love is selfless. It puts others before ourselves. We may have a crush on God because he is so "awesome", but unless we are willing to give everything we have over to him (which is really already his to begin with) we do not actually love him.
And giving everything to him includes not just physical possessions, but also hopes, desires, hurts, grudges. If we can give all of these things to God, then the result will be that we will love others the same as we love him, because we will have handed over to him the things which prevented us from loving those people in he first place.
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