"If I told you once, I've told you a thousand times!" My friend's mom used to say that, and then he'd say, under his breath, " . . . to never exaggerate." It's unusual for us actually to say something that often.
There is one thing, though, that any Christian has heard a thousand times or more: Love people. 1 John 3:11-12 says, "For this is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother’s were righteous."
God's been telling us from the very start of time to love each other. Cain is the poster child for what happens if we don't. And he's the one who personifies the reason we often refuse to love: The other person makes us feel as bad as we really are.
I wonder how much of the anger I feel is really guilt? How much is rooted in the fact that I know that, at least to some extent, I'm wrong and it seems like the other person might expose that? Or maybe the other person just lives the way I know I should. It's easy to hate the popular group, to hate the one who's both beautiful and smart, the one who never is wrong. But maybe that's because I know if I tried harder that could be me; that person reminds me that I'm lazier than I should be.
But that's the thing about love: it's not about me. It's about the other person. To love is to forget about myself and think about someone else. Anger, jealousy, guilt, hurt - those are all emotions that center on me. Love is the one that doesn't.
From the very beginning God knew that what would destroy me is my own self-worship, my perspective that all events are centered on me. By loving others, I negate my own self-destructive tendency, and I behave like God. It's how I was meant to be.
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