Hard To Love

Who is it hard to love? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I was at the New Orleans library Saturday to pick up some books for research purposes. While there, I saw a book by Joyce Meyer on display about loving people who are hard to love. That idea stuck with me a bit, You want to know who is hard to love?

You are.

Yes. You.

Look at yourself. Look at all your faults and failures. Look at all your annoying habits and quirks. Look at all the ways you can regularly mess things up and hurt those around you. You are hard to love.

“Not I! I am a great person! I am easy to love!”

If you think that, you are a prideful person and, well, hard to love then.

“Okay. So thanks for slamming me in your blog. You’re not any better!”

Absolutely right! As someone in the dating sphere now, I do think about that. Sure, I have friends who point out my positive traits but there’s a lot of negatives. I don’t know anyone who goes out there saying “I would really like to find a nerdy theological gaming apologist on the spectrum in his 40’s.” I could list a number of my faults and annoying quirks. I know I am a very hard person to love.

Yet here’s something else. I have said that because of so many negative traits others have, we have a hard time loving them. It would seem then that if we eliminated those traits, then people would be easy to love. Right?

Well how about Jesus?

Is He easy to love? If He was, we would all do a whole lot better at keeping His commandments. We don’t. We struggle and sin against Him every day. At those times, we love ourselves more than we love Jesus, and we ourselves are very hard to love.

Also, if Jesus was easy to love, everyone would have done so. However, Jesus got crucified. People who are loved by everyone do not get crucified. Jesus is the best person who ever walked this Earth, and He is hard to love.

Naturally, this goes to the Trinity entirely. Every person of the Trinity is hard to love. If they were easy to love, the history of Israel would be quite different. If God was easy for us to love, we wouldn’t have all the struggles of the flesh that we constantly have. However, we regularly fail in our love for God.

So let’s review here. We have said that people like ourselves are hard to love because of all our faults and failures. We have also said that God is hard to love, despite Him having no faults and failures. It seems that it is hard to love everyone. Yet what is the common reason that makes it hard to love people?

Us.

When we fail to love someone, it is not because of a deficiency in them, no matter how real that deficiency is. It is because of one in us. Can’t love your neighbor? Your neighbor might need to change and in reality, they definitely do, but it is not their fault if you find them hard to love. It is yours.

That’s also good news because that means it is yours to change. It is your power to repent and seek to change and learn to love. You learn to love others, yourself, and God.

Admitting the problem is the first step. It is you. It is me. We are the ones that we can change the most and we need to get started.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)