Could there be a more daunting declaration in the bible than 1 John 4:20?
In Works of Love Soren Kierkegaard holds this verse up before our eyes until I feel like a puppy having its nose shoved into what it did on the floor. He dissects John’s statement from every possible angle while continually reminding us that loving the person we see means loving them just as they are, warts and all. And I’m left with the disturbing thought that if my love for God is directly related to my love for people, I’ve got a big problem.
Loving the person we see obviously means that we do not exempt people from our love because of their race, gender, sexual orientation or other externals such as political or religious convictions. In fact, we are not to filter out even enemies as recipients of our love! In loving indiscriminately, Jesus says, we “become children of your Father in heaven” who “makes his sun to shine on bad and good people alike, and gives rain to those who do good and to those who do evil.” (Mat. 5:45)
When we don’t allow this abundant God kind of love entrance, when we don’t love “the brother or sister we see,” we become inspectors rather than lovers. We begin to scrutinize everyone to see if they are worth loving or not. We become like an entitled individual at a smorgasboard picking and choosing, turning their nose up at almost everything they see. “She talks too much. He’s too edgy. She’s too quiet. He’s too passive. She’s too assertive.” We say, in effect, “If I could find enough good things in them, then I’d love them.”
Even our closest relationships with family and friends will become tainted and less honest. We end up not truly loving the real person. Kierkegaard says:
“When it is a duty … to love the men we see, then it is important that in loving the individual, actual man, we do not slip in an imagined conception of how we believe or might wish that this man should be. He who allows himself to do this does not love the man he sees, but again something unseen, his own idea, or something like it.”
Loving the person we see means loving our spouse when he or she criticizes us or when they don’t pick up their socks. It means loving your husband even if he’s not romantic enough. It means loving your wife even if she is a workaholic and seems never to want to spend time with you. We are to love the gossip at church before he or she learns to rein it in. The same for the overly controlling committee member. Loving the person we see means loving real, actual people, not people as we hope they will be some day.
When we keep criticisms of others in our minds, we hold something back from the person in front of us. Subconsciously, we’re waiting for a better version of them to appear before we give our whole heart. And so our relationship is not whole-hearted and becomes less immediate, less real.
As I said at the beginning, this is an incredibly challenging verse of scripture. And yet, my heart is strangely warmed by it. The fact that God says such things to us implies God believes we can change. Through all our continual failure, Jesus seems to be saying, “Keep your eyes on me. I will bring you through. One day you shall love perfectly just as your Father in heaven. Keep trusting; keep going; keep focused on loving the brother or sister you see!”
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