I spent my Wednesday and reached the end of the night with things to say and little energy to say them, so I posted a post (“Quit your raging”) from 2019 that I had already reposted in 2022. It bears repeating, but it felt like cheating. (Does an inadvertent rhyme really make me a poet who doesn’t know it?)
When I decided to post every day these hundreds of days ago, I didn’t pledge not to post reruns, I suppose. And, as noted, some things need to be repeated. I even repeat myself on purpose sometimes, albeit using somewhat different arrangements of words.
One of the things that weariness temporarily defeated was that I still find it hard to understand the hatred and invective that have flown through the air willy-nilly throughout the first quarter of the 21st century. “Quit your raging” was one of my more clear expressions of that thought, so it substituted for fresh words.
Like my darling Red before me, I have grown closer to my faith as the reality of my mortality sinks in. (No, I have not received a somber prognosis, just the one we all get: We’re all gonna die.) The founder of my faith boiled it down to two simple laws — love God, and love your neighbor. From those foundations we can extrapolate an entire lifestyle of living in peace and nonviolence with everyone.
In general people want peace, but we create friction with one another by the simple act of interacting, because we are 8 billion unique individuals. For whatever absurd reason, some people spread fear and irrational hatred, gathering other people into groups that blur their unique individuality, and the next thing you know, we are not living in the peace we all want.
Love God, and love your neighbor. Some people are hard to love, especially the ones who are spreading fear and irrational hatred, especially the ones who advocate for war and violence, and perhaps especially those who advocate for war and violence in the name of peace.
That’s why the first of the two laws is key. With so much not to love, sometimes the only way to love your neighbor is under the influence of the God of love, the God who is love itself.
Even 2,000 years ago, tax collectors were considered abhorrent creatures. Even 2,000 years ago hypocrites and adulterers were rampant, and thieves were crucified. But this God incarnate treated them all with respect and, most important, love. He intended to set that example when he proclaimed those two essential laws.
It’s not easy to do. Every day, wherever I turn, hatred and rage are rampant. When we’re honest with ourselves, we realize that we are meeting what we perceive as hatred and rage with a hateful and raging response. “Wait a minute,” I try to tell myself when I want to point out the hatred in another’s eye, “I am supposed to love this person. I’m supposed to love even these people who hate and persecute people who believe as I do.”
It’s a good thing that love is a decision and love is an act, not an emotion, because much as I may want to hate what you say and do, I made a promise to my God to love you, and while I personally may be incapable of giving that love, with God all things are possible.
That’s how to love our neighbors — by loving God first.
