Love Others

“Love others as well as you love yourself.” (Mark 12:31 MSG)

Who are these ‘others’ that Jesus is talking about? Does it include people who are different? Some translations of the Bible use the word ‘neighbor’ instead of ‘other.’ I think it’s easier to ‘love thy neighbor’--because we can choose to live near people who are similar to us. Many neighborhoods are shaped by voluntary segregation. It’s common practice for those from the same race, faith, and socioeconomic group to flock to certain residential areas. However, loving others who are different--those who do not look or speak like we do--those who do not share our faith, politics, or values--this can be quite challenging. We might tolerate them, but that’s it. We are not eager to spend time with them, get to know them better, or to serve them. It’s hard to imagine that Jesus meant for us to love them!

“You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” (Anne Lamott)

Sigh!  Perhaps we have projected some of our prejudices onto God in order to justify our hard-heartedness. We fail to recognize God in ‘others’, because doing so would be troublesome.

God encompasses everything and everyone. In Him we experience perfect unity. In Him we live and move and have our being. When we love God with all our passion, intelligence, and energy--there is a natural progression in our empathy--our ability to see commonalities. Our eyes are opened, our hearts become softened. We grow in our capacity to love others. We recognize our oneness in God.