From Judgment to Reflection
Can you love someone without loving what they do, say, or think?
It seems a reasonable question. We encounter people whose behavior troubles us, whose words offend us, whose thinking we find misguided or even objectionable. Must we approve of these things in order to love the person?
Surely not.
But perhaps the question is too comfortably removed from the person asking it.
Can I love someone without loving what they do, say, or think?
Now the question has changed. It is no longer an abstract inquiry about the nature of love. It has become a question about me.
Can I distinguish between a person and that person's behavior? Can I disagree without contempt? Can I reject an idea without rejecting the person who holds it?
And perhaps more importantly, can I do these things when the disagreement is deeply personal, when the words are directed at me, when the behavior has consequences I cannot simply overlook?
It is easy enough to affirm love as a principle. Living it is another matter.
But the question doesn't stop there.
Does God love me in spite of what I do, say, or think?
That is a rather uncomfortable reversal.
Suddenly, I am no longer the person evaluating another's conduct. I am the one whose thoughts, words, and actions are being considered.
And I know enough about myself to recognize that not everything I think is admirable, not everything I say is wise, and not everything I do reflects the person I would like to be.
Does God love me anyway?
Perhaps even that question needs adjustment.
The phrase in spite of suggests that God's love must somehow overcome the obstacle of my imperfections. But what if God's love is not primarily a response to what I am or am not?
What if God loves me because love belongs to His nature?
John tells us that God is love (1 John 4:8). Paul reminds us that God's love was demonstrated while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8).
His love did not await our improvement.
It preceded it.
And that realization changes the question again.
How do I align what I do, say, and think with God's will—not so that He will love me, but so that I can reflect the love He has already given?
Now we have moved somewhere quite different from where we began.
The concern is no longer whether another person deserves my love, or whether I deserve God's.
The concern is how God's love becomes visible in my life.
Not as a transaction. Not as an effort to purchase divine approval through acceptable behavior. Not as a demonstration of spiritual accomplishment.
But as a response.
"We love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19, NIV).
The order matters.
God's love comes first.
Our response follows.
Wandering Through the Garden
There is something revealing about the way these questions developed.
They did not emerge as the steps of a planned argument. One question led to another, and each changed the perspective from which the subject was being considered.
It was rather like wandering through a garden.
We enter somewhere. We may have a destination in mind. But the path is not necessarily straight, and what catches our attention along the way may change the direction of our steps.
We notice something we hadn't expected. We pause. We reconsider. We turn toward something else.
And perhaps we discover that the destination we imagined was not quite the destination toward which we were moving.
There is a difference between wandering and being lost.
Wandering can have direction without having a predetermined route.
Perhaps our spiritual lives unfold in much the same way.
We begin with questions shaped by our immediate experiences. We encounter other people, confront our own shortcomings, discover tensions in our understanding, and gradually find ourselves looking at familiar things from unfamiliar perspectives.
The transformation may be so gradual that we do not recognize it while it is occurring.
Only afterward do we notice that something has changed.
An attitude we once defended no longer seems defensible. A judgment we once made easily now gives us pause. A question that once centered on someone else's shortcomings has become an examination of our own response.
We have not necessarily decided to think differently.
Yet we do.
The Work Within
And here we approach more difficult ground.
If this changing perspective reflects spiritual transformation, who is doing the transforming?
We are inclined to speak of improving ourselves, developing better habits, strengthening our character, or becoming more Christlike.
There is nothing inherently wrong with recognizing the importance of our choices and conduct.
But such language can quietly shift responsibility for transformation onto ourselves.
Christian faith makes a more remarkable claim.
The Holy Spirit is at work within us.
Paul writes that God works in us both to will and to act according to His good purpose (Philippians 2:13).
Not merely to act.
To will.
The transformation reaches beyond outward behavior into the desires, perceptions, and inclinations from which behavior emerges.
But even here, our language becomes troublesome.
We might say that transformation occurs when we allow God to work within us.
Yet does God require our permission? Have we made divine action dependent upon human authorization?
Perhaps we should say that we surrender to His work.
But does surrender become another accomplishment, another thing we must successfully do?
Or perhaps we simply recognize and respond to what God is already doing.
Even that formulation leaves questions unanswered.
There is a tension between divine initiative and human participation that our words do not easily resolve.
We are not merely passive objects. Our choices matter. Our conduct matters. Our willingness to listen, to reconsider, to repent, and to respond matters.
Yet we cannot claim authorship of the transformation itself.
Perhaps this is one of those places where our desire for precise explanation exceeds our capacity to provide it.
Jesus told Nicodemus that the wind blows where it wishes. We hear its sound, but do not know where it comes from or where it is going (John 3:8).
We recognize the wind by its effects.
Perhaps we recognize the Spirit's work in much the same way.
Not because we can describe every movement of God within us, but because we begin to see changes we cannot adequately explain by our own intentions.
And perhaps we should be cautious even here, lest we presume to identify every change in our thinking as a direct act of the Holy Spirit.
Discernment remains necessary.
Humility remains necessary.
And the possibility that we have misunderstood remains very real.
Another Question
All of this suggests another way to frame the original inquiry.
How might I be obstructing the expression of God's love through my life?
It is a difficult question, because even the effort to remove an obstruction can become another exercise in self-management.
We can turn surrender into a technique, humility into an achievement, and spiritual growth into another measure of personal success.
The very thing we seek to avoid finds its way back into our thinking.
Perhaps the better question is not how to make ourselves more worthy of God's love, but how to live more fully in recognition of it.
And perhaps even that is not a question demanding an immediate answer.
It may be a question to carry with us.
Through the ordinary encounters of the day.
Through disagreements, disappointments, and moments of impatience.
Through the times when we recognize that our thoughts have become unkind, our words unnecessarily sharp, or our judgments too easily rendered.
Not as occasions to despair over our inadequacy, but as opportunities to recognize the distance between the love we have received and the love we reflect.
And perhaps to discover that the distance is changing.
Not always visibly.
Not always predictably.
Not always in the direction we expected.
But changing.
The Direction of Love
We began by asking whether we could love someone without approving of what that person thinks, says, or does.
We found ourselves asking whether God loves us without approving of everything we think, say, or do.
Then we began to consider how that love might find expression in our own lives.
And finally, we confronted the mystery of transformation itself.
Who changes us?
How does that change occur?
What part do we play?
These questions need not all be answered before we take another step.
Perhaps the most important discovery is not that we have arrived at a final understanding of love, but that our perspective is being redirected.
Away from evaluating another person's worthiness.
Away from defending our own.
Away from trying to earn what has already been given.
And toward a life that increasingly reflects the love from which it draws its existence.
We may not know precisely how the transformation occurs.
We may not even recognize it while it is happening.
But we can remain attentive to its direction.
For love is not the reward for alignment.
Alignment is the response to love.
And perhaps the wandering through the garden is not merely how we find our way.
Perhaps it is part of how we are being changed along the way.
