Since being at Baylor, I have been introduced to more new people than ever before in my life. A few of the people I met seem to have a crazy talent that I so clearly lack. They can find a connection to anyone they meet. I’m not kidding, I walk around with them and watch as they meet new people, ask questions, and slowly work to reach a topic they can both relate to. It’s so cool.
For me, watching this happen showed me something I frequently overlook. We’re all just human. No matter how different I think I am than someone, we have to have at least something in common. The ability to find that one thing we relate to can make all the difference on how I view them. This brings me to my second point.
“But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” Romans 5:8.
Think of all the times God punished the people, all the times He was angry or frustrated. Now look at the sacrifice He made for us all anyways. We are called to love everyone. In the NIV bible, love is mentioned 550 times. Jesus highlights the importance of faith, hope, and love. But He says the greatest of them is love. I don’t believe humans have any authority to judge others, (That’s not to say I don’t, we’re all sinners). I do think, however, that God shows how to love others even if we hate their sin. We can learn to separate people’s behavior from their essence.
I also think the biblical meaning of love is different from the cultural meaning. There are people I love that I won’t talk to again. There are people I love that I haven’t met. To love someone is to truly want the best for them. And to hate is anything that falls short of this. Jealousy is rooted in hate, pride is rooted in hate, gossip and judgement are rooted in hate.
I think if more people prioritized finding that one thing in others that they loved, there would be a lot less hate overall in the world. When you love something in someone, you overlook a lot of the other things you otherwise would’ve hated. “Above all things, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sin” 1 Peter 4:8. I think if we can find that one thing we love in someone, we can separate them from their sin, and we can love them all the more.
This article is shorter than most, because there aren’t a lot of ways to say this. You either love the people around you, or you don’t. If you don’t know them, try to reach out. If you don’t like them, try to find something you have in common. This could be a mutual friend, a class, a shared struggle, or the same coffee order. It doesn’t matter if it’s small. It just needs to be something. This also doesn’t mean forcing a relationship. Remember, you can love someone without being around them all the time. And this is most definitely not me speaking from a position of knowing how to do this. I started writing this thinking about how bad I am building those new bridges with people. It’s a lot easier to sit down and write about what it looks like to do this than it is to actually go out and talk to a stranger until we find a connection. But I’m working on it, and in that process I have seen how much easier it becomes to just be myself, and how it helps me see the world as a bit of a better place.
The last thing I wrote about was the brokenness of the world. I stand by that. But no one lives happily by only looking at the negatives. I went to a Catholic high school, and in theology classes they would say “Jesus is always the right answer, but if you write Jesus for your essay it will be marked wrong” or something along those lines. Right now, I would say He is the right answer. Living and trying to model His love is the right answer. I would encourage you to try it. Even if you just commit yourself to seeing if you can cold turkey the things in your heart and love like Jesus for one whole day. Or, if you’re more of a ‘take it slow’ kind of person, try going out of your way to be nice to one person a day, then two, then three. You get the point. See where it takes you, you might be surprised by how far a little kindness can go. Build the bridge with the people around you, make the connections, learn to love more than just the people you think “deserve” it.