Love or Like?

"I know I have to love them . . . but that doesn't mean I have to like them . .."

How often have you heard someone use that phrase? In reference to classmates, coworkers, relatives? How often have you used that phrase? How often have I used that phrase? Thinking about it, I've said that more times than I would like to admit . . .

In preparing for this weekend's Senior Youth LIFE¹ Group this phrase jumped into my head. We are beginning a study on the Fruit of the Spirit, of which the first listed is Love. And reading about love it got me thinking, can you really love someone and not like them? Have we so bifurcated and subdivided the way relate to others that "love" and "like" are completely independent things?

Now I understand that we are not always filled with warm fuzzy feelings toward each other. There are times when my wife does something that I do not enjoy and I get mad at her, but I still love her. There are times when my siblings have done things that I do not like, but I still love them. There are times when it seems appropriate to say "I don't like you but I love you." But I'm really starting to doubt that you can love and not like a person . . . at least as this phrase implies. Because, you see, you never use this phrase towards people you want to love. You never say that about your boyfriend or girlfriend, your grandma or grandpa, your best friends. This assertion that being required to love without being required to like is reserved exclusively for those people we wish to be able to hate.

I must say, this smacks of rebellion. How can we truly be loving if we do not put forth the effort to like? Sure we can say we do not like what a person does, we do not like their attitudes, we do not like how they dress, how they act, how they talk, their other friends, or what have you. But we cannot truly love a person without liking that person. To say that you have to love them but you don't have to like them is trying to get the best of both worlds. You 'love' them, only because God tells you to, but you still have an excuse not to go out of your way for them (because you don't like them and you don't have to). You will split hairs over the expression of that "love" in order to avoid that person at all possible costs. Does that sound like the love that we are called to?

But strive for the greater gifts. 

And I will show you a still more excellent way. 

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, 

but do not have love, 

I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 

And if I have prophetic powers, 

and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, 

and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, 

but do not have love, I am nothing. 

If I give away all my possessions, 

and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, 

but do not have love, I gain nothing. 

Love is patient

love is kind

love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude

It does not insist on its own way

it is not irritable or resentful

it does not rejoice in wrongdoing

but rejoices in the truth

It bears all things

believes all things

hopes all things

endures all things. 

Love never ends.

1 Corinthians 12:31-13:8

So as you go this day, do not excuse your dislike of others. Express true, Christ-like love. Show them patience and kindness, do not be envious, boastful, nor rude towards those you "love but don't like;" for Christ was never any of these things towards you, and how much more do you deserve not to be liked by God?

1. LIFE Groups is what our church calls "Sunday School" we changed the names to better reflect our purpose for this time, which is to Learn In Fellowship through Experience.