I May Not Like You, But I Do Love You!

So, I am thinking…

There's a huge disparity between 'like' and 'love'.

"Like" is often about preference. It has to do with delight, compatibility, enjoyment, admiration. You like what feels pleasant, agreeable, beautiful, easy to be with. Liking is often responsive; you like because something in the other evokes pleasure or approval.

Love, on the other hand, is something much sturdier. It can exist even where preference has died. Love can survive where liking does not.

To say "I love you but I don't like you right now" might sound contradictory until you see that they operate on entirely different planes.

Take for example; you may dislike someone's temperament, their life choices, what they've become, the pain they cause, even their company. Yet still will their good.

That last phrase is very important.

Love often reveals itself not in enjoyment of a person, but in willing their good; sometimes at a cost to yourself.

That is why a parent may be heartbroken by a child's rebellion and still sacrifice everything for them. This is why siblings who can barely stand each other will defend one another instantly when the need arises. This is also why someone can remain devoted to a difficult spouse through illness, addiction, or failure.

The liking may have eroded, but the love remains.

While liking says, "I enjoy you," love says, "I am for you." That is a profound difference.

Liking often asks: Do I want to be around you? Do you please me? Do I feel warmth toward you? Or if I may coin it better, "What is in it for me should I do 'you'?"

Love, however, asks: What do you need? How can I seek your good? What do I owe in fidelity, mercy, sacrifice?

One is often emotional resonance. The other can become moral action.

Now, I think it is only proper that I explain that the love I am talking about is not that which is rooted in the loveliness of the beloved, but rather in that of the lover.

We are not talking about an affection that says, "I love you because you are lovable," but rather one that says, "I love you, therefore I move toward you even in your unloveliness."

This is a radically different kind of love.

It is AGAPE.

That's the kind of love God is and wants us to come into also.

God shows us a picture of this love when He chose us even when He didn't have to. When we didn't deserve it. He didn't like what we had become. He found our presence repugnant, yet He came, bearing salvation in His wake, as He was led to the slaughter.

He might not have liked what we had become, but He loved us. He loved us beneath and beyond what we had become. God hated the sin in us and what it had turned us into, yet He loved us.

He proved to us beyond reasonable doubt that His love does not require our approval.

In fact, His love constantly appears precisely where approval is impossible.

Sometimes the highest forms of love begin where liking ends. Because then love is no longer sustained by charm, chemistry, reciprocity, or pleasure. It becomes chosen, purified, costly; almost covenantal.

Anyone can love what delights or pleases them. It is another thing entirely to love what wounds, disappoints, or repels.

Liking is drawn toward what pleases. Love remains even when pleasure disappears. Liking enjoys the beloved. Love seeks the beloved's good.

And the deepest love shows itself most clearly when liking has every reason to withdraw.

Honestly, "You can love those whom you do not like."

This is why our Lord Jesus could boldly ask of us in Matthew 5:44:

"But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you…"