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Is it possible to love all humanity? Does God want us to love all humanity? Collectively? Individually?
Aren’t we confusing words today as well as their meaning? Do we mean liking or loving?
Obviously, Christ didn’t mean liking, for he told us to love our enemies whom we obviously don’t like. His commandment also obviously means to love all people, because he told us to love one another as he loved us. He loved each person.
We too are called to love each person—those we like, those we dislike, even those who wish us positive evil.
“Liking” is an emotion, while “loving” is a Person. God is love, and where he is, there is love. But if we allow “liking,” the emotion, to guide us in the choice of whom we are going to love, then we end up loving no one, except perhaps ourselves, and that in the wrong way.
If a few people come together in a small group because in some natural way they “like” each other, then they will merely be fulfilling the needs of one another. There will be no need to turn to Christ. There will be no need to fulfill the one need for which we have been created—our union with him.
Yes, for our wholeness, for our mental health, each person must have a friend. But what is friendship? It is never exclusive. It is two people, hand in hand as it were, going to God—but never forming a closed circuit and simply feeding on each other. They always have one hand free to hold anyone who comes into that friendship.
Even marriage is subject to this rule. Husbands and wives will have happy marriages if they are also friends. But their circle will increase very quickly, and they will have to have two hands open to clasp the hands of their children.
And the family—husband, wife and children—will have to have, at both ends, open hands to grasp their neighbors. Eventually, then, all will form a community.
Is it possible to love all humanity? Indeed it is, and the sooner we begin, the sooner the global village will become a nice place to live in.
Excerpted and adapted by Gospel Without Compromise, (1989), pp. 95-96, out of print
