FUNNY THING ABOUT LOVE

 It's possible to love people you don't even like. You do have relatives, don't you? Most of us are kin to one or two people whom we would never choose as friends, yet find ourselves loving just because they're family. A friend, someone said, is God's apology for your relatives.

Funny thing about love. It's easiest of all to love those people who have qualities we wish we had. In their presence, we feel those same traits inside us quietly moving to the forefront. In Reader's Digest some fifty years ago, I can still recall one woman telling another, "I come to visit you often, because I like myself when I'm with you." An old adage holds that "a friend is like another you."  It is, but, as a rule, it's like a better you.

That explains my admiration and attraction to people with the gift of quietness; I have so little of it myself. It helps to explain why we marry people so unlike us; we are attracted by their strengths and wish we were more that way. (And it may help to explain why we dislike people who are so much like us!)

Funny thing about love. In the Bible, we are repeatedly commanded to do it. We are told to love God, our neighbors, our spouses, our children, our brethren, strangers, even our enemies. That surely means there is a difference in liking someone and loving them.  Because we cannot make ourselves like someone, no matter how hard we try.

How liberating to learn we do not have to like those we love. "God so loved the world," the Bible declares, but nowhere does it say He likes everybody. Far from it.

That's another funny thing about love it's far more than an emotion. No one cannot command the emotions. Try it sometime. Try to make yourself feel fear or anger or affection. You can't do it.  When God commanded us to love, He had in mind something far greater than sentiment and affection. Biblically, love is something we do.  Love is an action.

Every time God commands us to love, He means for us to do loving things. In Leviticus 19, the Lord tells Israel to love their neighbors as themselves, then gives them a long list of ways to express that love--everything from just weights and fair trade to compassionate behavior. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. According to Luke 6, loving our enemies means doing good to them, blessing them, praying for them, giving to them. It has absolutely nothing to do with whether we like them.

Funny thing about love. The emotion of love often follows loving deeds we do, like a caboose at the rear of a train. We do something nice for someone and end up liking them. Just as a train will run with or without a caboose, God's people are to do loving deeds whether or not they feel love.

Many years ago, a new Christian showed me how this works.

Jeanette called me, her young pastor (at the time) for counsel. "As a believer, I know I'm supposed to love my mother," she said, "but I hate her." Her mother had lived a rough life and had had Jeannette in and out of foster homes as a child. "She's old and sickly now," she told me, "and wants us to be close, but I can't bring myself to love her."

 I said, "We know God wants you to love your mother, so, let's pray that He will give you that love." We prayed together over the phone. Then she said, "I still don't love her." I said, "Well, let's believe God is going to answer our prayer. What would you do if you did love her?" "Bake her a cake?" she said. I suggested she do just that.

Next day she called and said, "As I baked it, I didn't love her.  When I was driving over to her house, I hated her. But when I gave it to her, she broke down in tears and hugged me. That's when I loved her."

Actions, then the emotion. Obedience, then the joy. That is the order God has established in the universe.

Dr. George Crane ran a newspaper advice column before the days of Abby and Ann. A neighbor approached him in the supermarket one day and said, "Tell me how to leave my husband in a way that will hurt him the worst." "Why in the world would you want to do that?" he asked.

She explained that her husband had had an affair which had run its course, and he was back at home now, expecting everything to go on as before. "If I leave him now," she said, "he'll hardly miss me. I want to leave him and really hurt him. Tell me how."

Dr. Crane said, "It's very simple.  For six weeks, devote yourself to this man, to his every desire.  Pour out your love and affection upon him. Then, let him come home one day and find that you have cleaned out the closet and are gone.  It will devastate him." The woman thought it was a great idea and promised to try it.

A few months later, they bumped into each other at the market.  "Oh, Dr. Crane," the woman said, "I want to thank you for that great advice."

"How did it work out?" he asked.

"I just overwhelmed my husband with love and affection. I cooked his favorite meals and rubbed his back and sweet-talked him. It was really something." 

Dr. Crane said, "And how did he take it when he came home and found you had left him?"

"Oh," she said, "I didn't leave him. We're too much in love!"

Love is funny like that.

 by Dr. Joe McKeever

A ministry of the First Baptist Church of Kenner, Louisiana