Loving as He Loved

Are you ever saddened by the shallowness of your love for some people? I am.

It seems to me that many Christians fail to love well.  Instead we judge (or even hate) because we have never made an effort to know and understand.  This is especially true when it comes to loving people who disagree with us or who live in ways we feel are unbecoming or unacceptable.  Too much Christian love is a “selective love” and an inadequate reflection of Christ's love.

In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis says, 

 If you are a poor creature--poisoned by a wretched upbringing in some house full of vulgar jealousies and senseless quarrels--saddled, by no choice of your own, with some loathsome sexual perversion--nagged day in and day out by an inferiority complex that makes you snap at your best friends--He (God) knows all about it.  You are one of the poor whom He blessed.  He knows what a wretched machine you are trying to drive.  Keep on.  Do what you can.  One day (perhaps in another world, but perhaps sooner than that) He will fling it on the scrap heap and give you a new one.  And then you may astonish us all--not least yourself: for you have learned your driving in a hard school. 

It is far too easy for us to assign people to hell who have spent their lives trying to climb out of it because our judgments are not based on knowledge, but on ignorance and prejudice.  I have found that the more I know someone, the more difficult it is for me to judge them, and the easier it is for me to extend to them the same love and grace that God has extended to me.

Everyone fights hidden demons and needs just as much (or more) love and grace as we do. Understanding that should make it easier to keep the Lord's command.  My command is this:  love each other as I have loved you (John 13:34).