Without God, my unloving heart can’t truly love unlovable people

By David McElroy · September 12, 2025

I don’t know how to love you — or anyone else.

Loving others has never come naturally to me. The people around me seemed stupid, irritating, foolish and irrational. They hurt me and angered me. But I kept reminding myself that Jesus taught me to love them anyway, even the ones I might consider enemies.

But I struggle with this more than I like to admit, because my selfish and unloving heart naturally wants to be angry and strike out at the people around me who frustrate me and leave me feeling as though there’s no hope for the human race.

And the failure of my unloving heart to love these people who seem so unlovable drives home a truth that I sometimes forget. Without the loving spirit who I know as God, it’s impossible for me to truly love anyone. Without God, I am incapable of moving beyond my selfishness, my unloving spirit and my foolish pride.

Left to myself, I don’t have the capacity for that kind of love. Without the powerful presence of God, I can’t escape my pride, my selfishness or my cynicism.

Of course, I can love those who treat me kindly. I can love people who are like me. That’s easy. But when I face people who strike me as irrational, hostile or cruel, I can barely contain the bitterness in my heart and mind.

And I suspect many of us feel the same way.

We live in a society boiling with rage and misunderstanding. I used to think human beings were growing more rational, that greater education and connection would make us better and more loving. Instead, our technologies connect us in ways that amplify anger and suspicion. We haven’t caught up — emotionally or spiritually — with the world we’ve built.

So everyone feels like a victim. Each group sees others as the oppressors. Each insists it’s right and the other side is evil. We nurture bitterness in our hearts, convinced that it’s the other people who need to change.

I see this everywhere in politics and culture. Each tribe casts itself as righteous; each paints its opponents as monsters. And beneath it all is a cancer of hatred eating away at our souls.

What confuses me most is how often Christians — my own people — lead the way in unloving behavior. Eager to defend doctrines or impose laws, many of us forget the words of the savior we claim to follow: Love your enemies. We read the command, but somewhere in the back of our minds we add, “Surely he didn’t mean those people.”

But he did.

I’m no better. I know my own failures too well to condemn others. But it unsettles me that so many Christians don’t even seem to recognize the contradiction. At least non-believers aren’t claiming to follow a God of love, so I can’t hold them to a command they don’t accept.

The only thing I’m certain about is that I am incapable of loving others. I’m not a good person. I don’t have a loving heart. I want to give up on all of you. I want to run away and become a hermit, far away from where others can hurt me and make me angry.

But I don’t have that option. I’m stuck with you. I need community. I need love. I need to obey the command to love God and love my neighbors.

And since I can’t do that on my own, my only hope is to trust God to love for me — to teach my unloving heart to love the unlovable human beings all around me.

It’s not a boast to claim to rely on an invisible God, of course. It’s just a confession of brokenness and need — a need for grace that I can find only in the God who made me.

I’m not doing well enough when it comes to loving any of you. I know I’m not. But I believe God can change me — if I’ll stop acting as though I’m good enough or smart enough or wise enough to learn how to love on my own.

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We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

Is it an attempt to blur the gender line between men and women? Or is it some weird tribute to the traditional Scottish kilt? It’s hard to say, but fashion designers keep pushing for men to wear skirts in the last few years. Both men and women in modern fashion seem oddly androgynous, as though it would be offensive for a man to look manly or for a woman to look feminine. A CNN article about the latest fashions from Paris caught my attention Monday and left me wondering about the ugly clothes the designers are hawking. If a man wants to wear a skirt — or a kilt — that’s OK with me, but I’ll stick with a traditional dark suit with a white shirt and tie. (Well, when I’m not wearing t-shirts and sweats, of course.) I always wonder who actually buys the outlandish garb from fashion designers anyway. I would be humiliated to be seen in any of this stuff, but I obviously have no sense of high fashion.

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