Love Everybody

Does that mean everybody?

After a man entered a nightclub in Florida and killed and wounded almost a hundred people, the next day, a radio personality commented: “We need to start acting kindly to each other. If everybody did just that, the world would be a safe and happy place. And though we can’t make other people be kind, we can behave kindly ourselves. That much is easy.” 

Her comments were quite appropriate, I thought. But though I was moved by her plea, I will note that being kind to everyone is not so easy. 

In Luke 10, a fellow correctly recites the two fundamental commandments, to love God and to love our neighbors, then asks how do we recognize the neighbor we should love. Jesus tells him about a man who gets mugged and beaten up, a priest and a Levite who pass by and do nothing, and a Samaritan (a disdained foreigner) who binds the man's wounds, takes him to a place of healing, and pays for his stay there.

If being kind were easy, the priest and Levite probably would have helped the beaten man.

Being kind and loving our neighbors are practically synonymous. Psychologist and author M. Scott Peck defines love as a willingness to sacrifice for the sake of another person. In other words, being kind even if it hurts.

Kindness may be easy when people treat us well and don’t get into our way. But when they attack or demean us or frustrate our plans or desires, being kind to them is hard. And kindness to the degree it becomes sacrificial love is, for many of us, so hard we consider it next to impossible.

Still, if we think of ourselves as followers of Christ, it's how we are required to act. According to Soren Kierkegaard, regarded as one of the most brilliant philosophers ever, when Christ instructed us to love our neighbors, he was issuing a command; and the parable of the Good Samaritan means we are to love without distinction. Not just our family. Not just our church brethren. Not just those who vote the way we would prefer they do.

Christ commands us to love everybody. Even those who believe or act in ways we find odious. Even those who may have done us grievous wrongs. Even those who may come in a caravan to enter "our" country.

Lot's of people demand to know: What if some of them are escaped convicts? Or diseased? What if they might take our jobs? What if a political party is attempting to replace "our" votes with "theirs"?

Those are questions I can't answer for anybody except myself. But I can repeat that Christ commands us to love everybody. Which gives us plenty to think about, now and always.

Here is Passing Through, a quite popular song at coffee houses where I used to hang out. Please take special note of verse two.