Opinion column

Did Jesus say, "Like your neighbour"?

James Knight explains why the commandment to love all people doesn’t necessarily require us to like everyone.

A friend of a friend, a researcher named Dave Fenton, did some research on young people who had fallen away from the church at a young age and were no longer following Jesus or on a close walk with Him. The researcher found that the most common reason given was that they felt their parents weren’t living a very Christian life at home, outside of the church – and that their outside conduct didn’t live up to the messages being preached in the church. This may, in fact, turn out to be the Christian church’s biggest indictment.
 
My own experience of church life over the past 25 years is that, in terms of quality of individuals present, it tends to follow a bell curve distribution (a normal distribution) – where a small percentage of the congregation seem fairly hard to like, the majority are fairly decent but not outstanding people, and a small percentage are wonderful (this is unsurprising – the bell curve is a pattern you’ll see in many other group scenarios too). Of course, it is going to be relative to types of measurement too. Across various qualitative scales too – kindness, education, willingness to serve, intelligence, pastoral skills, etc – there’ll be a similar bell curve distribution effect, with the majority fairly decent, some hyper performers and some at the lower end.
 
However, we must also consider the standard set by Jesus, and how the normal distribution measures up against that too. Personally, I think Jesus is calling us to the highest standards – of which we are all bound to fall short – but it means that if church congregations follow a bell curve distribution on these qualities, then some of its members are failing more than others, and that, according to the research, those failings are being picked up on by people looking in from the outside.
 
That is to say, we may all be equally short compared to God’s standards, but there is a scale of standard of accountability on the human level – and there’s no question that on a human level, things could be a lot better at varying degrees - and that remains true even though we are equally short by God’s standards. Just as, even though God loves all tennis players equally, by the standards of the sport, some players are performing better than others. To the tall man, all ants may appear to be the same size, but to the entomologist with a microscope, the differences are pronounced. In this analogy, God is, in a sense, the giant entomologist who simultaneously sees us all from on high as equally forgiven sinners and equally loved and valued, but zooms in and cares profoundly about the small details that differentiate one creature from another.
 
In the defence of Christians, though, let me say, it’s a shame that the typical church contains so many people who are deemed to be less likeable than the church (and God) needs them to be – but it’s here we have to remember two key things. The first is that the faults that make church a less good place to be are the very same faults we’ve all been saved from with Christ’s mandate of salvation through underserved grace. In other words, given our human fallenness, it is not surprising that fallen people, even Christians, exhibit flaws and faults – because, Christian or non-Christian, we are all in the same boat of imperfection, sailing those choppy waters together. The second is that alongside grace comes love – and remember, we are not called to like everybody, just love them, as Jesus tells us:
 
“But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you."
 
It’s here we can get a sense of why a part of the not liking people is in the loving them. In loving them, we want the very best for them, which is why we care more about blemishes in the objects of love than in the objects of indifference. A scratch in your prize, pristine sports car irks more than a scratch in an old banger you no longer care about. We are called to love each other, which involves a deep sense of solicitude that ought to cause wounds at the sight of dislikeable traits. You’ll notice with those you love most that it's our love for them that heightens our dislike of bad and harmful traits - similar to when we hate a cancer more when it's in the bones of those we care about. We are called to love all humans, and therefore, we wouldn't have such an acute dislike of badness and dislikeable traits if the love wasn't there willing the transformation.
 
In Christianity, the two principal commandments (love God, love neighbour) mean we are called to love everyone unconditionally. But we only have a duty to love everyone, not a commitment to like them - in fact, the profound thing here is that not liking the unlikeable parts is actually a key element of loving them. This, I think, is one of the key distinctions between duty and commitment. A husband has a duty to love his wife for the rest of his life, but he has to make commitments to ensure that duty is carried out. Commitment is rather like a moral and ethical acceptance of the responsibility of one's duty.
 
That might help us in at least two ways. The first is that we have a duty to God over a duty to everyone else, so if it's right to steer clear of toxic relationships or restrain negative influences, we are fulfilling our duty to God in doing so (of course, in Christian marriage there is usually an exception, as the duty to the beloved becomes part of the duty to God, and vice-versa). The second is that in our duty to love everyone, we are fulfilling part of our duty to love God, but we are making a commitment to the responsibility of loving in spite of the things we dislike - which should help us in trying our best to love those we don't like as God loves them, in the hope that it will inspire greater likeability.

The image above is courtesy of pixabay.com

James Knight is a local government officer based in Norwich, and is a regular columnist for Christian community websites Network Norfolk and Network Ipswich. He also blogs regularly as ‘The Philosophical Muser’, and contributes articles to UK think tanks The Adam Smith Institute and The Institute of Economic Affairs, as well as the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity (LICC). 

The views carried here are those of the author, not necessarily those of Network Norfolk, and are intended to stimulate constructive debate between website users.