I don’t plan to respond at length to many posts…I think in general it’s better to let the observations people make stand for themselves. No need for me to kibitz on everything that is said. But Michaela’s response to yesterday’s post kept rattling around in my head.
Michaela observed, “For me, personally, respect also has to do with acknowledging the other as a child of God. I can, in one sense, love someone as a child of God with or without liking their behavior or choices they make in life. Does it help, in those difficult relationships we have to try to see them as a child of God?”
My own reaction is: yes and no. In one way, seeing others as a child of God makes all the difference in the world. Seeing the people we love — or anyone, for that matter — as children of God fundamentally alters the way in which we see people and, therefore, the way in which we treat them. Forget this basic distinction and people can become competitors, or the means to an end, the audience in a play in which only “I” really matter. See others as children of God and our relationships are placed on a completely different footing.
The distinction matters, too, in intimate relationships. Caring for others — loving them — is about an embrace that not only draws us closer to each other, but makes it easier for others to sense the presence of God in that embrace.
On the other hand, there is another sense in which I think God longs for us to love one another on our own terms and not just as a child of God. The identity, “child of God,” can insulate us from the gritty reality of loving someone as-they-are. Put another way, it can so insulate us emotionally that we “love people in general, but no one in particular.”
Loving others “as-they-are,” of course, is its own kind of spiritual exercise. In a sense our relationship with someone else is a laboratory for learning how to love — and love not just others, but God as well.