The Bible tells us to love our neighbors

“The Bible tells us to love our neighbors, and also to love our enemies; probably because generally they are the same people.”

G.K. Chesterton

So, I started looking at Chesterton quotes after Josh over at @swordandpencil mentioned him in a Substack. The guy has a lot of quotes and I’m surprised that I haven’t drawn him before? Like…A LOT of quotes. My books-to-read list is already way too long and here I go adding more on top of it.

In light of this quote; I think it’s easy to look at people you don’t like or don’t prefer and think “Oh I’m supposed to love them” and it feels great but what about people that we *hate?* There are some contemptible people on the earth right now and we’re supposed to *love* them? What does that even look like? I think of other quotes often thrown around online like:

“There’s no hate like Christian love.”

Or

“There’s nothing more loving than for me to hate what God hates.”

Or

“Hate the sin not the sinner.”

And it leaves a lot of us in this weird space where we’re not sure what to love OR hate?

Personally, I take it to mean when we attack, we attack actions and methodologies and ideologies. But then we pray for the person. Because the person is in the same spot we are in and while their actions may deserve criticism, their personhood deserves our prayers.

I know nothing softens my heart toward a person more than praying for them. It really is something else.

I’m a lay person though, what do you think? How do we actually love our neighbor?

P.S. If you look at the Timelapse the drawing for a long time looked like I put Trump and Roosevelt and mixed them in a blender and then seasoned them with Colonel Sanders. 🤦🏻‍♂️ I know these are comics and caricatures but still I don’t know what was going on there. It was funny. It’s totally ok if you point it out. 😅

Another P.S. I’m trying to cross-post on Substack now so if you want emails whenever I post you can go sign up over there! Hat tip to @bluehose95 for the idea to start posting over there too! It's a work in progress. 😅