// the love i hate//

I realized today that I’m not very good at loving my enemies. I realized this when I found myself working with someone who I really can’t stand very much. Not only did this person wrong me personally, but this person is pretty much everything that I find myself hating about people. Selfish, dishonest, petty, a typical ‘gossip-girl,’ power-hungry, the list could go on I suppose…and yes, I do have a list…because I’m a pretty judgmental person a lot of times.

We’ve been diving into the concept of honor at my church here recently, a topic which I initially thought to be just another Christian craze over a new buzz word. But, as it turns out, there’s some really tender, delicious meat in the subject matter. This past Sunday, some of my notes that I mediated on really seeped in…

Luke 15:20-24 (prodigal son)

• Son returns home full of shame, but willing to bestow honor on whom honor is due…the father
• Father bestows highest honors on son
• honor shows compassion and dispels shame…honor covers shame
• Honor celebrates: honor throws a party for those who are cloaked in shame and celebrates them (Luke 15:23)
• Honor clothes and ‘puts a ring on it (Luke 15:22)

Genesis 9:20

• Ham heralds Noah’s nakedness…proclaiming his shame
• brothers honor father and cover his nakedness…honor covers vulnerability and the shame associated with it

If honor covers shame, than who am I to revel in someone’s shame or attempt to hold things over his or her head. 

My problem is two-fold, I suppose. 

1. Pride: I’m so proud of myself for establishing the ‘status’ I have for myself, that I see this person as being lower than me in a sense. Hence the stupid, “everything I hate about humanity” criticism. Who died and made me the authority?!
2. Dishonor: Honor really is a part of love. When you love someone, you honor them…or at least you should. You prefer them above yourself. And I’m not sure that we live in a society that plays by those types of rules. Hell, I know I don’t play by those rules. It’s easy for me to love some people when I see them as beautiful things. But there are those, the great many, who I don’t see as beautiful things at all. To me, they are the filth of society and culture. I’ve got pages and pages full of hand-written hate ballads. The disgust seems to spill off onto paper with the same over-saturated smear as the ink from my pen. It’s easy for me to love the fringes of society, but not the meat and potatoes that makes up the majority…that’s not the kind of love I’m good at. In fact, it’s the kind of love I hate. It makes no sense to me. Why should I love them? 

But wait…why should anyone love me? Everything I hate about many of these ‘enemies’ tends to be characteristics of which I am the worst perpetrator. And yet I have a father who cloaks me in studly duds, and gives me the family heirlooms and throws a party for me. 

“Love one another, as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love everyone.”

-John 13: 34

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

-Mother Theresa