Love love love love love. That’s what Christians say over and over again. We love God. We love the world. We love each other. But I’ve seen a few things that completely obliterate this concept of love in many Christians’ lives. It turns “love” into a nice word with no real power.
If you’re going to truly love others – your neighbors, your family, your fellow believers, and complete strangers – you need to be doing these three things.
1. Stop labeling.
As soon as words like racist, bigot, thug, bully, or idiot leave your lips, you’ve labelled someone. When you label people, you shove them into a corner. You turn them into a nasty word instead of a human being. It’s hard to love a nasty word.
It’s only when you dig deeper than the label that you can start truly loving someone. When you see the humanity, but ultimately the thing that God sees in them, you can appreciate and love them.
2. Stop dismissing.
“You only feel that way because you’re…” That’s called a genetic fallacy. It’s when you dismiss someone or what they believe just because of their background or associations. Do you ever dismiss someone simply because of their political affiliation? The way they dress? Their accent?
It’s comfortable to dismiss people. It keeps you from having to deal with the fact that you may be wrong, or at the very least that things aren’t as black and white as you’d like to think.
3. Start listening.
Finally, we have to start listening. Even if it hurts. Even if we notice inconsistencies or bad presuppositions in the other person. When we listen beyond just facts and to the actual person, we can start showing true love.
Never shout truth without listening first. And I’m willing to bet that once you’ve listened you won’t want to shout. You’ll realize there’s a real person behind that belief. Someone loved by God. Someone for whom Jesus died.
We’re called to love others. But we have to stop labeling. Stop dismissing. And start listening.