I choose love over hate, because the Author of the story’s not done

By David McElroy · June 12, 2016

We all have a natural inclination to hate those we see as our enemies. We hate those who hate us. We hate those who hurt us. We hate those who threaten us.

The righteous indignation of anger leads to burning hate — and it feels so justified. We’re the ones who are right. Everyone else is wrong. It seems so simple.

Hate is easy. Love is staggeringly difficult.

Hate is the default reaction for all of us, me included. It feels so good and so right to burn with rage at certain people, even if we claim principles that teach love.

Love isn’t a default reaction. Instead, it’s a difficult choice, especially at first. But as you continue to make that choice, you change. Your heart softens and gets bigger. Eventually, love seems like the only viable choice — even though you know it will remain difficult as your choice is tested again and again.

If you read or watch news — something I strongly advise you to avoid — you’ll soon be filled with reasons to hate people, both individuals and groups. Everybody has a good justification for their hate.

“They hated us first.”

“Those people have been killing us for generations.”

“My group has always been oppressed and hated.”

All of the justifications will be true on some level. History is full of groups hating each other. Humans have murdered and stolen from each other, almost always blaming the victims or — even worse — saying, “God told us to do that.”

But I choose to love, even if others choose to hate. I choose to love, even if that doesn’t make sense to you. I’m not trying to convince you to adopt my point of view. I’m just explaining my choice.

Hate hurts the person who’s full of hatred. Even if you don’t call it hate — even if you dress it up as righteous — it still hurts you more than anyone else. It warps your ability to think and feel. You see other people as sub-humans who don’t quite deserve what you and your allies deserves.

Worse, hate hardens your heart. Even if you feel softness toward your own kind — your own allies or group or friends who have been hurt — your heart hardens from rage that makes it hard to be reasonable or rational. You see everything through the lens of your rage and hate. You will end up justifying things which you would have never justified before — taking that attitude that those who “do that sort of thing” or who are of another religion or ethnic group, for instance, deserve whatever bad things happen to them.

Second, I believe there is a Creator who isn’t finished writing the story of the human race. I’m not interested right here in what we call this Creator. I simply know beyond doubt that I’ve experienced a Spirit — God, Creator, Supreme Being, whatever your term is — who is absolute love. I’m counting on what I have experienced, not anybody else’s interpretation of what they believe God is.

If you claim to follow Jesus — as I do — you have no way to follow Him and yet also hate other people. He wasn’t vague about it. In the Sermon on the Mount — in which He preached very clearly about morality — He told His followers to “…love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you….”

That isn’t vague. It didn’t come with an asterisk saying, “Love people unless they’re gay — or Muslim or black or unless they’ve hurt you.”

I’m terrible at obeying Jesus about this. I’m not the example to follow, because I’ve failed so many times. But I’m not going to try to justify the times I’ve failed or seek to create an exception that justifies hate that might be comfortable for me. I’m just going to keep trying to get better at it — by constantly making better choices.

I believe that the Author of life — the Creator of everything — is going to perfect us at some point. I don’t believe that where we are in history is the end. I believe we’re going to learn to love each other and that everything will be peaceful. I don’t expect that anytime soon, but I expect that to happen by the end of the story.

So because I believe hating others damages myself and because I believe a Creator wants me to love in ways that aren’t natural to me, I choose to love.

I don’t pretend that’s always an easy choice. Sometimes you have to separate yourself from people or from information or from certain influences. If those things trigger hate and rage in you, maybe they’re not good for you. Maybe you’ll see the world differently without those things in your life. Maybe if you see the world in a different way, love will seem like the only reasonable choice to make. Maybe.

I can’t make you see the world as I do. That’s hard for me to accept, because I feel as though I should be able to make you see things my way — and you’d surely agree with me.

But I can’t do that.

I can just tell you this is the choice I’m making for myself. I’m betting that love is going to find the way to win.

Hate is easy. Humans have always done it. Love is difficult, but your choice about whether to experience love or hate changes you and it changes your experience of life.

I choose to love — and I believe that’s what makes life worth living.

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After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

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