Mark 12:31 – “And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”  NKJV 

            Why is it so difficult to love some people?  I had a person say to me the words of my title.  They said, “As a Christian I love you but I don’t like you!”  I had just received 100% of the vote for reconfirmation as pastor of the congregation and that individual who voted told me I was a terrible pastor and then spoke those words to me.  I was stunned.  If I was the horrible pastor described in those words how did that individual cast YES ballot for me in the pastoral election?  I asked that but only heard the aforementioned repeated.

You and I have met or know some people that we find incredibly difficult to love.  Some people are so sweet, nice and kind they are easy to have an emotional attachment to and we afford them what we call LOVE.  Others are caustic in their personalities, clash with us ideologically and emotionally and we labor to afford them what we call LOVE.  It is often incredibly difficult and most of us avoid those people and prayed they would just go away.  Oh we feel a twinge of guilt but most cover it with some justification or another and then say, “Well I don’t like them but I love them in the Lord.”

It is sometimes difficult to LOVE people that we genuinely like.  Why?  Well among other reasons is because we are human beings and aside from the Grace of God we battle self (desires and ego).  Throughout my life I have been told by well-meaning people, “You have to look out for number one.”  That speaks to one of the major issues in loving people is that too often human love is contingent upon “what’s in it for me…?”

Another significant reason that we find it difficult to LOVE others is because most have a gross misunderstanding of what LOVE really is.  William Shakespeare popularized ‘romantic or emotional love’ and we have swallowed that theory hook-line and sinker.  We have to FEEL LOVE and FEEL LOVED for it to BE LOVE in our minds.  When LOVE is an emotion it is fickle.  I would suggest that you cannot totally control emotions.  You can control your response to emotions but there are so many outside stimuli in play in forming emotions they are virtually uncontrollable and if your view of love is emotional you are going to have a problem.

Agape Love, as described in Scripture and directed to humans as revealed in 1 Corinthians 13, is not based on emotion but faith, conviction and is a choice.  Jesus said here in Mark that we are to LOVE our neighbor as ourselves and that too is a significant problem far more often than any will admit.  Sometimes we just do not love ourselves.  If I do not have a healthy view of who I am then how can I love you?  If I do not have a solid understanding of who I am in Christ and my condition and position in God I cannot love you with any semblance of Agape or Unconditional Love.

Tragically we pretend, saying all the right religious words but our hearts are cold, indifferent, uncaring, unfeeling and even antagonistic toward the other person.  Thankfully that is not how God LOVES.  He knows our flaws and chooses to LOVE US.  He knows our failures and chooses to LOVE US.  It is not simply an emotional response from Him but a choice He has made.  When I say I Love You I can say it from the perspective of God’s Grace and having made a choice in my heart to Love you.  I see you as God’s creation and one He viewed as worth the Blood of Jesus therefore I CHOOSE TO LOVE YOU.  We may rub each other the wrong way more times than not but I can still honestly say I LOVE YOU and in loving you I will, in time find a pathway to common ground which will overcome the things about you that bug me and hopefully the same will work for you.

God bless you as you go through this day and may, His grace enable you to love those who are difficult to love you encounter.   Blessings!