Theology Of Love 36

 One of the huge, probably the greatest challenge in living out a theology of love is just that: living it out.  But I am not thinking here of those moments of inspired heroism where you have just saved a life or even an entire village in time of disaster through your benevolent and courageous intervention.  I am thinking here of  much subtler and more challenging heroism.  That's right, Gentle Reader, I am talking about the every day.   In order to learn how to love others (and simultaneously learn how much we need to learn about loving others), all we have to do is get out of  bed in the morning. The rest will take care of itself.  If you listen to the radio news and talk programs on CBC every morning as I do, then you are going to be hearing quite a wide variety of viewpoints and opinions, and they are not going to be all to our liking.  It can be indeed very tempting to get worked into a lather about how horrible people are on the right, if you happen to be on the left, or how awful they are on the left, if you happen to be on the right.  Or you want to kick the backside of the radio host for any number of reasons de jour.  All the while you will be reveling in a festering rage and hatred of them and all their ilk and all their spawn.  And before you know it, you are going out the door miserable and hostile and ready to take out the first loser that gets in your way.

On your morning commute, depending on where it is taking you, you will be confronted by other people, every bit as oblivious, in a hurry, and simply too selfish to care, as you are.  Road rage anyone?  Or how about sidewalk rage?  Every day we are going to be annoyed and inconvenienced by others whom we will deem as self-absorbed idiots and resenting them for it, and here is the real challenge of love.  To first acknowledge that our angry reactions are just that, anger.  And by letting ourselves get carried away by anger we are simply not heeding the first important step of walking in love: which is to say, the humility of admitting that we don't really know anything.  We do not know the person who is inconveniencing us.  We have no insight into their character, or into what kind of day they might be having, or of what kind of sorrow or tragedy they might be having to cope with.  Neither are we going to be able to see them through the eyes of people who actually love them, and chances are that, no matter how annoying we might find them, we are only annoyed at them because we feel they have somehow got in our way,  We cannot see them through the eyes of someone who might think they are the most wonderful persons on earth.

Neither are we going to get much perspective on how others are impacted by us.  And people are going to notice, and sometimes they might even get very angry.  Not necessarily that we have deserved it. But simply by not caring or bothering to be aware of the people around us.  That is the first important step in practical love.  Awareness of others through humility.