Can you love someone and hate their family?

If you love someone and hate their family, it is possible that you do not know them as well as you think you do or the family may be interfering in your relationship. A person’s family is an extension of who they are. The way that they interact and how they behave is often reflected by everyone in the family under certain circumstances. Some families are also very protective or possessive and my make life difficult for anyone trying to “take someone away.”

Really knowing another person is a challenge

One of the biggest challenges of starting a relationship is really knowing each other. People are very complicated, and it takes some time to learn how we relate. It is hard to distinguish between what you truly enjoy and what you enjoy because of the person that you are with.

No matter how much you try to be completely honest and transparent, it takes a long time to cover every possible subject in a casual relaxed conversation. There is always a chance that you will say something or leave something out because there is not time, or you had not really thought the subject through.

Even when you are forthcoming on everything that you can think of, there are many other aspects you that are not immediately perceivable, and you don’t know what you don’t know. Everyone acts differently when they have some power than when they are on equal footing. Everyone acts differently when they are frustrated to various degrees or angry or just mad.

A part of seeing aspects of another, very complicated person, is to see from other perspectives. A family gives that perspective both in how they relate to each other as well as the strong characteristics that are common in the family and give them their identity even if they do not want it to. if you hate a person’s family, you should really check out why that is and hopefully consider what it is about your partner that you’re seeing in the family member.

Remember that hate is a very strong word.

To hate someone or something is to intensely dislike them. It is not the same as being annoyed with someone, threatened by someone, just not liking to be around someone, etc. This strong response is sometimes related to your own limitations. What we hate in others is often in our blind spot. We sometimes have the characteristics that we find intolerable in other people. For example, if you have a lot of pride based on your insecurities, you will notice pride in other people and absolutely hate it. I noticed that a group of people really did not like a new person in our group. What was curious is that they hated him because he was overweight. He was. But the people that really reacted to him being overweight were also very overweight.

When you relate to people’s families, you are really relating to a part of them. They may not be at all like the person that you are building your relationship with, yet that person is still a part of their life. Your reaction to them internally and externally is important to your relationship.

Believe it or not, it is harder to love God than it is to love your brother.

John made a point that you cannot love God if you do not love your brother. The key is that you may think that you love God when you really don’t.

“If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother” (1 John 4:20-21).

You cannot see God, and yet, He does not change into whatever you want Him to be. God is who He is even if it is not what you want. However, unlike your neighbor, you can pretend that you love Him even when you don’t. You can say that you love God and ignore Him when he reaches out to you. You can say that you love God and ignore is commands for you.

 

Seeing beyond the brother that you see

When we love our brother because we love God, it is because we can see beyond what our brother does to what he is. Even when your brother does stupid things, maybe even evil things, he is not what he does, he is what he is. God sees us all as fellow sinners in need of salvation. Once saved, He sees us as His own children who have been adopted into His kingdom. This is true for the criminal on the cross as well as the missionary who gave up everything to serve the poor.

John elaborates on an interesting idea that we are deceiving ourselves when we say that we love God, but we do not love our neighbor. John writes it bluntly in “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness” (1 John 2:9).

Being in a committed relationship with God changes how you view everyone. When you engage in a committed relationship with God, you will view His family and His creation differently. God sees us all as fellow sinners who are made righteous or not based on their acceptance of Him. That means we are all in the same boat. We all have different characteristics and different things that we are good or bad at, but we are all sinners who are not worthy of what we have received. To pretend that we are better than someone else in the boat is just deception.

Love in God’s world, where we live, is reversed.

You do not love someone because they are beautiful, they are beautiful because you love them. God does not love us because we have value, we have value because He loves us. None of us have value on our own as Paul shared, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Yet we have value because, “…God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8).   Craig Groeschel as an amazing talk on this entitled, “Overcoming Feelings of Worthlessness“.

As much as we want love to be a feeling, it is an action. Jesus said, if you love me, you will obey my commandments. Your actions will result in the feeling of love, but real love is acting. It may be that which drives real action, but it does not ever divorce itself from action.

Action was initiated because of his love – love is not a just a really cool feeling. Loving someone is not a result of their actions but it is result of your actions. Your actions of loving someone is based on the motivation that God loves you. If God can really love you, then you can love anyone. God loved us so much that he gave us His son.

 

Here are 3 ideas that you can try if you want to love the family of the one you love

Look them in the eyes and see them as a person

I remember standing outside waiting for a concert to begin. We were waiting for some time and quite frankly the people behind us were standing a bit close and bumping us some. It was enough that it could be very annoying. I heard them speaking in another language that I only partially understood, and it brought up a question that I had about the language. I turned around and asked them about the word. They smiled and explained the variation to me and then we talked about nothing for a few more minutes. Everything changed from that moment. They were not too close and if they bumped us, it was just friends that were trying to keep everything together waiting for the concert just like us. In the moment that we talked and shared, they became people like us rather than obstacles and everything changed. If you get a dog and love on that dog with everything you have, you will see that you will feel love for that dog. The feeling of love does result from action, but love is action.

 

Extend your hand and help them where you can

I got pulled over once for not using a turn signal. The officer came to the car pretty hyped up from his last call and said something like, “You didn’t use your turn signal back there so either your turn signal is broken or your one of those guys who feels like he doesn’t have to use a turn signal.”

I looked at him and said, “I don’t think the turn signal is broke” and glanced back. He immediately went into “serve and protect” mode and went to the back of the car to check and see it the turn signal was working properly. It was, but he was already helping me and he continued in that mode with a friendly warning.

 

You can develop a love for someone by unselfishly helping them in a real way.

See them through their own eyes and experiences not yours.
Obviously, you cannot perfectly get into someone else’s shoes. However, it makes a significant difference if you try. You can take the time to listen closely and imagine what it would be like to have the experiences of the other person and their frame of reference before you decide if they are going to be important to you or not. It can be done in minutes and it can transform your understanding and love of your fellow human traveler.

ACTION: If you love God, your actions will be to love others. Take time to show your difficult neighbor that you love him/her.

I could be wrong. Let me know what you think.