Why we must love others
One of the most common comments about Christians is that we are all hypocrites. That is a charge I can answer only for myself. But before I do, I would like to tie in a couple of other things.
We live in a time where it would seem we are given only two choices about any given topic; pick one side, or pick the other, then look down on those with an opposing point of view. So begins the finger-pointing, the name-calling, the blamegames, and all the hard feelings that accompany such words and actions.
However, such conditions are not new. Our first exposure with that stuff probably happened on the playgrounds of our childhoods. But that is small potatoes. These choices and the reactions they encourage have dogged each generation, irregardless of time, place and culture. The only real difference between now and what has gone before is a matter of degree. Social media can propagate information, and our reactions to it, at a speed never before seen in human history. Sometimes the volume of reactions can seem overwhelming. So what do we do about it?
The first step is to remember this. “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath” (Ephesians 4:26). That is Paul’s general application of Christ’s words. “Ye have heard that it hath been said, thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you” (Matthew 5:43-44).
We always know it when somebody does something wrong, and nothing in us screams more loudly than when that wrongdoing is aimed specifically at us. But at no time are we directed to react against a person. The distinction cannot be more plain, despise the action, but do not despise the one who acted.
That last is the part where the hypocrisy comes into the picture. C. S. Lewis, once an avowed atheist, had this personal observation, as expressed in his book, “Mere Christianity:”
“I remember Christian teachers telling me long ago that I must hate a bad man’s actions but not hate the bad man: or, as they would say, hate the sin but not the sinner … I used to think this a silly, straw-splitting distinction: how could you hate what a man did and not hate the man? But years later it occurred to me that there was one man to whom I had been doing this all my life – namely myself. However much I might dislike my own cowardice or conceit or greed, I went on loving myself. There had never been the slightest difficulty about it. In fact the very reason why I hated the things was that I loved the man. Just because I loved myself, I was sorry to find that I was the sort of man who did those things.”
Let me line it out plainly. As Lewis observed, we continue to love ourselves even though we do bad things. The second great commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves. My inability to make the distinction between the bad act and the one who did it makes me a hypocrite every time I fail to make that distinction and begin despising the wrongdoer. If all of us, whether Christian or not, cannot extend the same love we allow for ourselves to others when they do something we don’t like, then we are all hypocrites.
(Philip Severi, a former Bishop resident, previously wrote a weekly column for The Inyo Register. He contributes to this page from his home in Twain Harte.)