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Saturday, September 17, 2011

Mark 12:31

‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’

The popular interpretation of this verse is that you should love people the way you want to be loved.  However, what this verse does not say is that you should love someone as if they were you.  Not only is such thinking about this verse wrong, but it's completely self-centered.  You love people they way they want to be loved, not the way you want to love them as we all have different love languages.

For some, gifts are symbols of love where others could care less about sentimentality of objects but really appreciate kind and affirming words.  It is not loving someone when you hug someone who doesn't want to be hugged, especially if you know they don't like them and do it anyway, even though you like hugs.

And yet this lie and misinterpretation has been told to us since kindergarten (The Golden Rule: treat people the way you want to be treated.)  Jesus isn't wrong, but our understanding is.  To love someone as yourself is a call to a radical shift in mindset.  When you love someone, you are actually loving yourself.  When one person is the body of Christ is happy, we all rejoice. When the line between me and you starts to dissipate and two start to become one and the entire Church body becomes one as Christ and the Father are one, then you will see and understand what it means to love someone as yourself for you'll no longer exist.

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