I have been giving quite a lot of thought lately to the loving of the “unlovable”. For me, at this moment, this has been the homeless. We all have reasons why some people are harder for us to love than others. For me, it’s not the threat of violence or even so much the idea of being latched-onto and taken advantage of. It’s the physical dirtiness and genuine likelihood of disease that I struggle with.
I watched a video a few years ago on refugees in Romania. The commentator was saying that genocides often begin when one group of people begin to see another group of people as less-than-human. In Romania, they began with various restrictions upon a particular people group that eventually escalated into complete segregation of these people from the rest of society. They were literally locked into camps within the cities. Of course, they could no longer support themselves or contribute to society in any way. They had limited access to water and food, and consequently became all that others claimed them to be—dirty, desperate, dependant. This scenario was compared with the treatment of the Jews by the Nazis. And of course, the Europeans did much the same thing with the Native Americans.
It’s not that I subscribe to the idea that homeless people have been forced into that position, or that they don’t own most of the responsibility for living the way that they do. But I do see the same spiral of destruction in their lives: that, once dirty, desperate and dependant, it is a practically hopeless pursuit to climb back out of that hole.
I have heard it said of Mother Teresa that she came to a moment of crisis—feeling God’s call upon her to care for the poorest of the poor in Calcutta. She said of a man on the street that she knew if she didn’t help this person, she wouldn’t help anyone. She helped him.
Jonah, too, faced a crisis when asked to go to the ones he despised:
Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim against it, for their wickedness has come up before Me. ...Jonah 1:2
Peter was given a command to go to the unclean accompanied by a vision:
He saw heaven opened and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals, as well as reptiles and birds. Then a voice told him, “Get up, Peter. Kill and eat.”
“Surely not, Lord!” Peter replied. “I have never eaten anything impure or unclean.”
The voice spoke to him a second time, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” ...Acts 10:11-14 NIV
We know now that Peter’s struggle was not about food. He was being sent to an unclean people as an instrument of God’s grace and mercy. Peter was being sent to the very people that he had taken diligent care to avoid his entire life.
Why does God do this? Why does he ask us to serve those we find it most difficult to love? Perhaps it is because, while we (humans) may find some people more or less loveable, God finds us all pretty dirty, desperate and dependant. Somehow, He loves us beyond our condition. He loves us in a better way, with a gracious, overlooking-what-we-have-become kind of love. He remembers us from the garden, I suppose, and sees in us what He created us to be. And this, I think, is how I need to see others. Not so much according to their condition as to who they are, who they were meant to be in Christ.
I know it’s not much in the scope of the whole world, but for me, this small step to pray publicly with a man who had simply approached me for money was an uncomfortably positive step forward. I’m sure that prayer was the last thing this man expected or wanted, but I hope that God will apply it to his soul nonetheless. As for me, I am a little closer to having the heart I want to have. And a little more thankful to God for loving me beyond my present condition.
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