How Do I love the people who hurt me?

​Thoughts from Bob Goff's #LiveInGraceWalkInLove day 314

Today Goff offers this thought, and maybe a challenge - he says "Love doesn't dishonor others; it finds a way to lift them up even when they actively push you down."

I'm sure that's the most radical request - command - of my Christian faith. How do I love people who hurt me, who take advantage of me or push me down or treat me mean - all the things people sometimes do in our lives that make them difficult to love?

More and more, I lean on Jesus' dying words on the cross to try to answer that. As the leaders who were crucifying Him laughed and sneered at Him, and drew straws to see who got his clothing - Jesus said this, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."

For the past several years, I've been doing a lot of work around adversity - especially childhood adversity - and how it impacts people. How it can literally change their minds and their bodies. It can change who they are. I can speak about this for hours to audiences, but the one thing I always ask them to take away from it - the one simple request I make of every audience, no matter who they are, is this:

When people interact with you in a way that's aggravating you or hurting you or making you feel uncomfortable in a whole host of possible ways, I ask you to consider if that person might have some deeper story in their life that's shaping the way they are acting right now.

That's hard. At least for me. Because my human mind can have a hard time letting people get away with how they are treating me. It often wants to get even with them, make them feel as bad about what they are doing to me as having it done to me feels in the moment. My human mind can drift toward hate and not love.

Jesus realized these folks all had deeper stories in their lives that were shaping how they were treating him. He wasn't excusing them for what they were doing, he was simply looking for a way to love them in spite of it.

There's an old saying that suggests the most unlovable people are usually the people who need it most. I believe that more every day. Because the broken and hurting stories people have buried in them, stories that have reshaped who they are, they are usually stories of how they were wronged, how they were un-loved or mis-loved. Stories that have left them longing for love, but with no idea how to ask for it or receive it - or even knowing what that looks like.

And many times, the ways they try to get it from us and others, is not very lovable. So it's up to us to try to understand "they know not what they are doing." It's up to us to show them what love really looks like.

Doing so - believe me - is the hardest part of my faith. But it's likely the part that counts the most. In my life, and in someone else's.