A Reminder: Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

My inner-monologue out loud

I’m going to be very honest with you.

Below is the transcript of the above monologue on radio today.

This monologue was not to any of you, was not directed at you, and does not have you in mind.

This is me talking to myself. I needed to hear this. This has been a very hard week on radio. I never want to see the charred remains of babies ever again.

I had to remind myself of this today.

So here goes.

TRANSCRIPT: One of the most difficult things in life, it's hard, is to love your neighbor when you don't like them. I'm amazed this week by the level of callousness of people who, pre-programmed to be so hateful towards Israel, to have bought in all the lies and propaganda, all the antisemitism, they can't even bring themselves to call out the atrocity of killing dead babies, that it's bad, that they've got to, "What about it? Yes, it's bad, but..." There's no but to killing babies. Just say, "It's wrong, they shouldn't have done it." And that you got to qualify it, that you got to say, "Yes, but..." No, there is no but to killing babies. It's bad. It's not a surprise that the people who want to give a "but" to it are the people who are perfectly fine decapitating babies so long as they're a certain distance inside a birth canal still.

Not all of you share my faith convictions, but mine says, "Love your neighbor." Mine does not say, "Love your neighbor unless your neighbor says something you don't like or endorses something you don't like, or says, 'Yes, but...'" — you still got to love your neighbor. That is really hard at times like this. I was having a conversation with my wife last night. So my wife, most of you know this, my wife, part of me is scared of her. I love her dearly. She's doing a strong man competition at the end of the month in Woodstock, Georgia, and she wants to pull a UPS truck. My wife has stage four lung cancer for which there is no cure and she wants to do a strong man competition she's been training for.

Okay, y'all know, y'all can find this funny. She sent me a picture the other day. My wife is deadlifting 240 at this point. She started, she couldn't deadlift 70. She's been going to this trainer, now she's at 240. The barbell she was using had 70 pound weight plates on it. And the very first thing I saw, this picture, is not that my wife is awesome or my wife is strong, or, "Oh my gosh, that's so cool," it's that, "Doggone it. I got to make sure she can't out lift me." I'm killing myself to make sure my wife can't catch up to me with deadlifts. There's a level of pride. I can't let her do it. And here she is, she's creeping up on my... Mine's right over 300 now. She's getting up there.

She was talking to me last night. She follows a person on Instagram who's a Muslim lady, who's a weightlifter, has all this Palestine stuff and pro-Palestine and support Palestine. And she's like, "Is she supporting Hamas? Do I want to follow her?" I told her the lady has been been brainwashed and indoctrinated. The kids in the schools in the Middle East, they're taught to hate Israel.

Most of you didn't grow up where I grew up. I thankfully went to an American school. The pages of the textbooks that referenced Israel were either redacted or torn out. I remember the first time I ever saw the Israeli flag. I was in ninth grade. I was surrounded by really, really smart kids at a very good school. And we were in Greece on a field trip and our teacher pointed out the Israeli flag. None of us knew what it was. We had never seen it before.

You pulled out an encyclopedia, those used to be the books you would go to for information, now we go to the internet, all the pages referencing Israel were cut out. All of the maps said Palestine, subtle indoctrination. And in the Arabic schools and the government schools, you were taught to hate Israel. So I can't hate someone from the Middle East who hates Israel because they were indoctrinated. They were brainwashed. They have no idea what they don't know.

But then I look at people here who can't just say, "Dead babies are wrong," they've got to caveat it. They've got to carve it up. They've got to complicate it to avoid moral clarity.

It's really hard to love your neighbor sometimes. But I've been to seminary. I didn't just read the passage in scripture that says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." I read it in the Greek. I read it. It's from Mark 12: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength." It comes from Deuteronomy. "Second of this, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There's no commandment greater than these." This is a restatement of God's command to the Jewish people in Deuteronomy: "Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor." And I've read, I read the Greek, I went back to the Hebrew in the Old Testament and I read it. And there's no exceptions.

There's no exceptions and that's what makes it so hard. There's no carve outs, there's no exceptions. There's no caveats. It says, "Love your neighbor as yourself," not, "Love your neighbor, except when your neighbor has political views you disagree with," not, "Love your neighbor except they're justifying monstrous acts. Therefore, it's okay, you don't have to love them." No, it says, "Love your neighbor as yourself." So sometimes you just have to suck it up and move past someone's views you disagree with to be able to love your neighbor. Sometimes you've got to build a meaningful relationship with your neighbor where you might be able to change their hearts and change their minds. But you can't do that if you're a jerk to them. You can't do that if you're the braying biblical donkey who refuses to do what God commands you to do.

Love your neighbor; it's hard. Let's just accept it's hard to love your neighbor. This scene in scripture where Jesus says to love your neighbor, it comes after he's flipped over the tables in the temple and driven out the money changers. So it doesn't mean give up moral clarity. It doesn't mean give up holding people to a higher moral standard. But it means sometimes you're going to encounter people in life who you think are bad people, who you believe are misguided people, who you would prefer to have nothing to do with and still you got to love that person, and oh my gosh, it's hard. Because I got a lot of hate in my heart this week, y'all. I do.

I don't like horror movies because I don't like to get that stuff in my head. I have a hard time getting that stuff out of my head. And this week has been one nonstop horror movie, seeing the bodies of the dead, their eyes open, seeing the charred remains of children. That's hard stuff. There was a story in one of the Jewish newspapers this week, Jewish couple, senior citizens, they lived in the kibbutz. Four Hamas terrorists stormed into their house to kill them. One of the members of Hamas held a grenade to the elderly lady's head. Her name is Rachel. And as he was yelling at her, Rachel, and all of my Jewish friends will recognize this as a Jewish grandmother, if ever there was one, Rachel says to the Hamas terrorists holding the grenade next to her head, "You look hungry. Come, I should feed you."

And she made them food and made them eat. And she told them it would be disrespectful if they killed her before she made them food to eat and she made them eat. And then when another one of them got angry with her and started yelling that it was time for them to die, to prepare for martyrdom, she said, "But you look like you are hungry. Come, let me cut up some pineapple for you." And she fed him pineapple. And then another one was agitated and she said, "You must be in pain. Look at your wounds on your hand." And she bandaged his hand. She nursed him like a grandmother would nurse a grandchild.

And all the while she was signaling to her grandson and her son, who were Israeli policemen and soldiers, how many there were and where they were located. And she fed those men and she read them from the Jewish prayer book, and she read them the early stories of the Bible to which they have a shared faith. Before the division of Isaac and Ishmael, she read them the story of how Abraham came to the land. She read them the story of Adam and Eve, and she read with them the prayers.

And while she was praying with them and praying to them and sharing the Torah with them and feeding them and nursing their wounds and providing them water to calm their thirst and nerves, her son and grandson and soldiers came in through the attic and gunned down the gunman. And she loved her neighbor. She loved her neighbor, and it saved her life. And still they eradicated evil. But she loved her neighbor, and that saved her life. Sometimes you got to love your neighbor even when you don't want to love your neighbor. And it's weeks like this where you have to push yourself to do it. This lady, Rachel, she loved her neighbor. She bandaged their wounds and she fed the men who were there to kill her. And that saved her life. And there's a lesson there for all of us.