Can You Really Love Everyone?
Is It Really That Easy?
It’s pretty easy to love people who love you back, but what about someone you don’t know? How about anyone that has a reason to dislike you (no matter how minor)? What if they look different than you? Speak a different language? Dress drastically differently? Have beliefs that clash with yours? Can you love them too?
In the Bible, Jesus tells us in Matthew Chapter 5:43-48 to love your enemies and to pray for your persecutors. Just as God causes it to rain on both the evil and the good – blessing all – so too are we called to love everyone.
If we only love those who care for us, how are we doing anything to better the world or to bring peace and understanding? Isn’t it a minimum expectation for most people to care for the people who love them back?
I believe it is fully within our capabilities to love all people if we view them the right way.
“Love the Person, Hate the Action”
Each person can be viewed as three parts – their heart, their thoughts, and their actions.
Have you ever heard the saying, “I love you, but I don’t like you very much right now?” This is something I have heard from therapists as a semi-humorous way to look at good relationships when everything isn’t going well.
- Kids having a tantrum in the grocery store
- A friend not getting the hint to stop joking around
- Your partner elbows you in their sleep at 3:00 am
- That one aunt who always pinches your cheeks at Thanksgiving
These are funny examples, but in each one, it is fairly easy to see why you would still love them, even if you didn’t like what they are doing at the moment – their actions.
We can expand this to anybody. Even though it is easier to love someone who shares the same ideology and does the same things as you, we can recognize that everyone at their heart is a fellow human, and we can choose to love the person regardless of what we think or feel about their thoughts or actions.
The 3 Keys to Loving Anyone
In order to do this consistently, we can walk through a few steps each time we find ourselves feeling uncharitable towards someone else. There are three keys to remember to being able to love someone.
- Recognize them as human, and that they share the same imperfect condition as us.
- Forgive them for anything they have thought or done to us, and forgive ourselves for anything we have thought and done towards them.
- Accept that love is a choice – not a feeling; choose to love the heart of that person while realizing you do not have to accept the thoughts or actions you don’t agree with.
It’s a bonus if these are reciprocated, but it is not necessary – you can love someone that doesn’t love you back.
What If It IS About The Person, Not The Action?
How about the people who have hurt us in the past – or are hurting us now? How can we love someone when just the reminder of them is enough to cause us pain?
This is significant, and there are many kinds of pain that fall into this, and this is probably the hardest to handle. In these situations, I believe it is even more important to learn to love them appropriately.
How to love appropriately will vary depending on the situation, but one of the keys is to ensure the hurt is not ongoing. If anyone is in an abusive or dangerous situation, they need to get to where they can be safe first.
How can you forgive?
Forgiving others is hard, but forgiving yourself can be even harder. How do we forgive – particularly when strong emotions are involved?
The secret to forgiving for me has been understanding that Jesus, who was completely innocent, willingly went to the cross for us, died, suffered in hell, and yet He still forgives me unconditionally. If He can do that, how can I do less?
My forgiveness is me acknowledging that I am not the Judge, and that I am giving all the hurt, pain, and responsibility to God to handle.
What if you don’t believe in God – can you still forgive?
Even if you are not religious, I believe you can use the example of Jesus to see the benefits of forgiving. Other religions give us similar stories that show how forgiveness helps the one giving it.
Forgiveness is freeing, psychologically. Not only do you release the weight of the memory associated with the actions you are forgiving, but it also allows you to process the related emotions better, and come to terms with them.
Forgive and Forget?
So, do we forgive and forget? Doesn’t that just encourage things to go back to the way they were and the same things to happen again? In short, yes – but I believe we need to forget in the same way God forgets. Since God is all-knowing, he does not forget in the sense of not being able to remember, but rather he chooses to forget by treating us as if it has not happened.
We can do this by using a Forgive, Forget, and Learn process. By learning from what happened to us, we can protect ourselves from being hurt in the same way again by anyone. We can then forgive the person who hurt us originally and effectively forget that it happened by giving them a chance to show us that they have changed – if they want to.
Then What?
The key thing once we are able to see everyone with love is to treat them with respect and dignity. If we can connect with them by establishing common ground, and they can see that we love and respect them, then we have a chance to have a real dialog and form significant relationships.
