A Christian Approach to Love and Disagreement

We have a rule around our house: If someone passes gas 20 times in a 15 minute span, then the perpetrator is forced to stay in the room for the next ten minutes, by themselves, while everyone else exits and sings The Wind Beneath My Wings over and over from an adjacent room. (Least popular household role: The nightly poot-counter).

I just thought I’d share. It’s a sheer coincidence that my opening story deals with passing gas on the very eve of our presidential election.

[Crickets chirping].

Really, though, there is a lesson to be learned from our quaint family rule (which, for the record, I’ve wildly exaggerated for effect).  Namely, that sometimes it is better to leave something alone for a bit until the air clears.  I was originally going to post – yea, verily, I had promised to post – an article this week called Why Materialism is Not Skeptical.  Upon further reflection, though, I realized that maybe the eve of a major political election was not the best day to post such an intentionally irritating and controversial article.  I figured that, whatever happens in the election, a subset of my readers would be really mad about it.  And that maybe posting something so annoying might kind of unintentionally rub salt in an open wound.

So I will be posting that highly exacerbating, already-written article next week – really, I will.  But this week I thought I’d post something slightly mellower…and that we all should think about as we ponder the election results. And no, I’m not going to tell you who I voted for or what I think about the election (at least, not today).  In fact, I’m writing this blog at 5:30 PM on Tuesday night, before any of the major election results are in.  So I don’t know who won, and I’m going to post this blog before I find out.

What does the Cross of Christ mean to me?  It means many, many things: But one of those things is that I am required to love people who disagree with me because Christ loved them enough to die for them.  It means that there is room for everyone at the foot of His cross; His love is big enough for all of us.

Do you know what our problem is?  We think that loving someone means agreeing with them.  Take Rush Limbaugh and Bill Maher.  If I said that I think Rush Limbaugh’s or Bill Maher’s opinions were mostly idiotic (they are), you might say “well, you must not love them.”  And that’s exactly my point.  We have some idea that we aren’t all “getting along” because we don’t “agree.”  After all, I can’t be “nice” to someone that I “totally disagree with,” right?  It just doesn’t “feel” right to us. 

But it’s all wrong.  Love and agreement are not the same thing.  In fact, the truth is almost exactly the opposite:

Why? Because these patterns are fear based and as such contract/close the hips in a defensive generic cialis levitra position. Under pressure to come up to speed cialis canada cheap much quickly come go-live.” 4. The herb offers a number viagra france pharmacy of benefits, which mainly include the following: Anti Aging Properties This ayurveda herb has the ability to delay the process of aging in males, but efficient natural ways to stop aging cure negative effects completely. viagra soft tab Natural admiration supplements for women accommodate abounding herbs like those mentioned above. Love begins precisely at the point that agreement ends.

Think about that statement for a moment before we continue, ok?  I want you to see it for yourself.  It’s easy for me to get along with people who agree with me in every way.  Those people validate my identity; they fill up my ego; they insulate me from things I may not want to think about.  That’s why research shows one of the very best predictors of who we like and who we hang around with is how similar their beliefs are to ours.

But it isn’t love to feel warmly disposed to people who we think are on our sideLiking those who make us feel good and give us ample direct rewards hardly constitutes a meaningful definition of love.

No; love only comes into play when we stop agreeing with people.  That’s the spirit of what Jesus taught.  He said that what distinguished His followers from everyone else was their willingness, not to care for their friends and family, but to love their…enemies.  Think about that.  What distinguishes His followers from others. Not what would be nice to do but is really hard and most of you won’t do it and that’s ok because it’s tough. No.  This is something that is central to what He thought we ought to be doing.  True love begins where agreement ends.  True love starts when you don’t have anything – anything at all – to gain from the person in question.  Jesus set a shocking example of this by dying for those who disagreed with Him enough to murder Him.  That’s why I opened with the Cross: It is an eternal symbol of the reality of loving beyond disagreement.

Now, maybe that sounds warm and fuzzy, and maybe you think that’s real nice, man, I’m with you. But the flip side is also true; and it doesn’t sound so fuzzy.  If love and agreement aren’t the same, then I must love people that I disagree with; but I also am free to disagree without the charge of apathy or hatred.  Indeed, Jesus hardly minced words with His opponents, often calling them some fairly nasty names.  I’m not saying it would make a movie rated R, but those bits also don’t often make it into most Children’s Bibles, either.

My point is that our society for some reason implictly imagines that the task of the loving person is to agree with everyone else, and that if they are not in agreement, they’re not nice.  It imagines that I cannot say that I think Rush Limbaugh’s and Bill Maher’s opinions are mostly idiotic (which is practically my social duty as a truth-speaking citizen) and yet still love them (so, ok, let’s just admit that this last part is something I’m still working on). 

But society is wrong about that.  I view my task – indeed, everyone’s task that wants to be good – as the same as the one Jesus laid out for me 2000 years ago: To not only love those who disagree with me respectfully (such as the readers of this blog that I admire and appreciate so much – ya’ll are an easy group to like), but also those who mock what I believe with sneering stupidity.  And to love them so much that I’d give them my last bit of food and starve to death myself instead – even if that last bit of food was something awesome like a donut, and not something nearly inedible like broccoli.

So, as we all reflect on election day (whatever the outcome), let’s try and remember Jesus’ wisdom.  Let’s all avoid the error of trying to stupidly agree with each other, and express our opinions freely in the spirit of public debate.  But yet: Let’s also remember that we should love each other regardless.  That this public disagreement is superseded by a deeper, older, and more  compelling obligation to love the person in front of you, no matter their creed, religion…or political party.

This entry was posted in Politics and Religion, What Christians Actually Believe. Bookmark the permalink.

7 Responses to A Christian Approach to Love and Disagreement

  1. liz says:

    Luv this post brother! I would give u my last Donut…ok..I would split it with u. And lets keep ‘the wind beneath my wings’ scene to a minimum over Christmas ..shall we? Luv u :-)

  2. Kathrene Conway says:

    Autumn got so tired of Luke pooting in her room, that she posted a list of rules on her door. The first one is the 20-poot rule. Luke has the song completely memorized now and can even sing it all the way through in ubby-bubby “language.”

  3. Uh-Oh says:

    I often wonder what this concept of love is. English suffers from a lacking vocabulary in terms of love – we have love of wealth, love of family, love of mates, love of country, and so on. Each has a different connotation, but the same word is used for all to the point that it tends to lose exactly what it means. For instance, I doubt the love felt for enemies is the same romantic love felt for a spouse or the patriotic love for one’s fatherland…

    Anyway, I should bring up the question of whether or not it is good or wise to love one’s enemies. Christopher Hitchens often replied to this particular creed by saying loving thy enemies was foolish, and rather he would wish to destroy them utterly before they did harm to his or his own. So there certainly are different opinions, and I’ve wondered about whether enemies should be ‘loved’ in the same way as friends.

    To me, it is an impossible condition to meet. ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself’ is another one which in a certain way could be understood and made useful, but taking it to a literal extreme I think it could be an impossible order. My interpretation of the above is given its equality-based statement, you can only love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. Therefore, you must love yourself first and properly before you can possibly love your neighbor properly, which means none of this self-degrading stuff where you would starve yourself before another. To me, in my non-Christian interpretation, a person who does not properly value themselves sacrificing themselves is hardly as valuable as one who, with great love of himself and his own, will still sacrifice for another.

    But that’s another topic. Loving your enemies. Real Politick would support a similar idea, whereas the enemies of today are the allies of tomorrow, so don’t stomp or humiliate them too much. But that doesn’t have anything to do with love so much as good strategy. It would be useful in politics today. However, while weaponizing love to counteract one’s enemies is an extremely powerful long-term device (and with martyrdom promoted as it is, any casualties promote the cause all the more), it is terribly costly to those that practice it. If your enemies do not want to stop from steamrolling over you or forcing their way, love certainly won’t halt them – and if it does, likely it will be after great harm has already occurred.

    I disagree with the clever use of love as a conquering tactic (this is on the religion-whole scale – individuals can be doing it for perhaps nice reasons), but I cannot say that it is a bad choice. How Christianity is set up allows it a grand advantage utilizing ‘love’ for all sorts of expansions and defenses, and because it is so effective at it is how I see it being the largest religion in the world today. Loving thy enemies is then to me simply one more way to conquer your foes. I’d like it to be more direct personally and preserve whatever love is as a non-weapon, but that is just me.

    Also, I would personally be more subjective in who earned my love. I would find it cheapened if I gave the same amount of love to my friends and family as I would thugs and malicious strangers. In fact, I would find that it became rather meaningless by that point if I ‘loved’ everyone – it would be like saying I acknowledge everyone who exists, which in itself is not even a feeling and hardly even a statement to consider. Practicing goodwill to the general masses is actually something I do for the most part, and I do like humanity more than a fair number of people I know, but I certainly wouldn’t say I love individuals I hardly know, and worse yet those who bring harm to mine and mine own. What reason then is there to love your enemies if it isn’t in the hopes that by so weaponizing that concept of love you will conquer them and pacify them? I don’t want to conquer them so much as neutralize their harm, so I guess either way that end may be achieved whether you love them or not.

  4. The Apologetic Professor says:

    Thanks, Sis! That was super funny. I like your plan — let’s share that donut with each other. (If it’s a vegetable, you can just have it). And about Christmas, well, what can I say…no promises. I mean, it IS a great song… : )

    You’re the best, sis! We send our love from Montana.

  5. The Apologetic Professor says:

    Thanks, Kathrene, for the clarification — which is, of course, the actual origin of the poot rule!

  6. The Apologetic Professor says:

    Uh-Oh,
    I appreciate the thoughtful comment as always. You make some really great points. I’ll limit myself to a few quick thoughts (which will not do justice to your excellent comment):

    (1) I agree that love certainly does, as a term, mean lots of different things. Here I was only thinking of the deeper sense of the word. As you correctly note, it can be complicated.

    (2) Almost everyone has some sympathy with Hitchens’ point of view, including myself. Indeed, I think that is the human default — it’s certainly mine. I often like the Psalms that talk about smashing my enemies into tiny bits, and I find Jesus’ teachings about loving enemies almost impossible. I’d love to believe I could morally hate my enemies. So part of me agrees with you. And yet…from a moral point of view…when I step back from that human instinct, I can see little good coming from hating enemies. I can see good from STOPPING enemies from doing bad, but that’s different from HATING them. If you hate your enemies, you often become the thing you hate in them. If you hate the bully, you become the bully. Hating people eats us up morally. And the world does not change for the better with hate like that…it requires love and forgiveness. I agree it is very difficult, indeed so difficult that I find it nearly impossible — I find that I need outside help. The old phrase rings true to me: “To err is human, but to forgive Divine.”

    (2a) Also — and I don’t think this is the primary Christian reason to love your enemies — but if hating your enemies is the default, then you assume that your enemies are bad folk when in fact they may be perfectly good folk, and so you perpetuate unnecessary evil. A lot of people hate people they don’t know because they are a part of a group that they dislike; and they dislike the group because it goes against their identity. Surely that is not a good thing?

    (3) I don’t entirely disagree with your conception about equating love with equality. Christianity has that built into it. But I do think if there were only one bit of food left, that it is loving to give it up — and that if everyone did that, the world would be a better place overnight. And I bet you would feel differently about the goodness in giving your last bit of food to a starving person if you were the starving person.

    (4) I know the “you gotta love yourself first” is popular in our culture, but I disagree with you there. First, because psychologically, we don’t have a problem with loving ourselves, as much research in my own field shows. Indeed, Jesus’ command correctly implies that we already love ourselves in some way (…”as yourself”) — it doesn’t command love for ourselves. The command is unnecessary for the most part. No: I find that I love MYSELF just fine…the hard part is loving others. I think our whole world needs a lot more OTHER esteem, and not more SELF esteem.

    Though your interpretation of the command has some merit — I do get your point. Taken literally, it doesn’t directly imply the giving up of the last bit of food (I think that teaching of Jesus is found elsewhere in the Gospels).

    (5) If you are loving your enemies to conquer them, then I don’t believe that is true love in the Christian sense. Though you are certainly right that Christians have historically done that a lot!

    (6) I ask myself the same question about enemies that you ask: What’s the point of loving them? I think it’s a complicated question, and you accurately described the complications. Rather than say I agree with what you said in this regard (I do), I would simply add that Christianity adds a different reason for loving my enemies: Because God loves me, and He loved me even when I was HIS enemy. If God had had the attitude towards me that I would like to have towards my enemies, then I’d be dead already.

    I do agree with you, though, on this point: If you simply want to neutralize them, hate and love might work just as well. I would also add that loving your enemies does not necessarily mean letting them run roughshod over (say) my family. If someone attacked my family, I would consider it my God-given duty to fight back. But I can fight back and still love them; indeed, love hardly would let someone continue to do evil indefinitely, if for no other reason but for their own sake. But the point here is that true love would want what is ultimately best for the attacker as well as the attacked. True love would hope for the attacker to repent, even if it were stopping them from doing harm. And yes, sometimes (in the Christian point of view) true love takes one on the chin and doesn’t hit back, trusting in God to take care of us.

    All the same, you are right to point out that this is indeed complicated in actual practice. Keep those comments coming!

  7. I wish to express my thanks to the writer for rescuing me from this particular crisis. Right after scouting through the the net and obtaining ideas which were not productive, I believed my entire life was gone. Living minus the approaches to the issues you have solved through your main guideline is a crucial case, and ones which could have badly damaged my entire career if I had not come across your site. That capability and kindness in touching every item was very helpful. I’m not sure what I would’ve done if I had not encountered such a stuff like this. I can also now relish my future. Thank you so much for the impressive and effective help. I will not hesitate to propose your web site to any individual who needs guidance on this subject.