To Be Loved By Those Who Love

“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.” - John 15:18

Ever since I was a kid, I wondered, why some people hated. And why some people hated me. It was part of my personality to try to make everyone love me, and I thought if I loved people, people would love me back. I’m naturally reserved on the surface, but my father told me that I was a lover of people, a people-pleaser, yes, but someone who actually loved people, and he knew me better than anyone else did.

I asked my father, one day, when a girl in my class who I asked that question to, why do you hate me, and she replied, laughing, because you are bad.

I started to hate her, for those words, for her feelings of hatred towards me. I wanted to reciprocate her animosity towards me, which tainted my initial grace.

My father reprimanded me, one day, when I was speaking ill of that girl. I told him, it’s because she hates me, Father. How can I like her, why should I treat her well, if she hates me?

And I told him of all the words she was spreading to others about me, that I was “bad.”

And my father shook his head, holding me in his lap, and said to me,

“Is it better to be hated by those who hate, or be loved by those who love?”

There is a lot of hatred in this world. And many people wrongfully assume that hatred, or their feelings for others, is a reflection of the people they hate. That the people they hate deserved it, that they are “bad people”, that the world is full of “bad people”, that they are better than them and those they hate are lesser.

Is hatred lesser than love, and love greater than hatred?

“He must become greater, and I must become less.” - John 3:30

Those who choose to hate are lesser. Those choose to love are greater. Those who treat others with kindness and love are greater. Those who are full of the darkness are lesser.

Do not judge others according to your own feelings towards them. Their worth is not defined by your sin.

I choose to love. The way Jesus did, loving those who hated him, not because the people he loved deserved his love, but because in the act of loving, he saves his own humanity and the humanity of the world.

I choose to love to save my own humanity.

What about you?