Saturday, October 4, 2008 · no responses

I concluded my last post with the idea that Jesus’ wisdom in dealing with difficult people was the result of filtering their actions and His responses through love — what I termed a “love filter.”

I should note here that a love filter isn’t rose-colored glasses; choosing to filter people and the world through love is not choosing to ignore problems or act as if none exist. We saw last time that Jesus didn’t ignore problems; rather, He had the wisdom to know when to confront and when to overlook.

So the question becomes, “How do we love as Jesus loved? How do we develop that wisdom?” This is by no means an exhaustive list, but here are two things that are helping me.

See people from an eternal perspective: I touched on this in my first post about annoying people. Reminding myself that the lost are lost and need my compassion helps me to filter out some annoying behavior. My pastor said recently that we will never lock eyes with anyone who doesn’t matter to God. While I might write off someone as beyond redemption or beneath my notice, God never does that. To return to my current “problem person,” Alan matters to God. Let me say that more emphatically: Alan matters deeply to God, and God’s dearest desire is to see Alan restored to relationship with Him. How can I show disdain for that which God values so highly?

Pray blessings on them: Years ago, I heard a preacher say that loving our enemies was very hard to do, but we could turn Jesus’ teaching around and find a path to that place of love. Here’s what Jesus said:

“Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.” (Luke 6)

This wise man said start at the end of the list: pray first, then bless, then do good, and eventually you’ll find yourself actually loving the person that seems like an enemy.

What to pray? We might be tempted to pray with David that God would strike the heads of His enemies, but that would be the wrong approach — no matter how satisfying it might be in the moment! Me, I have trained myself to go beyond, “God, deal with this person” to “Father, I don’t know what this person needs, but You do. Bless him.” And then I add, “Bless not so he’ll be easier to deal with, but bless him because You love him.”

It’s hard to stay angry with anyone for whom we are regularly praying in love; those prayers bless not only those we name but also ourselves. Praying for God to bless someone helps us to get and keep that eternal perspective.

Filtering people’s behavior through God’s eternal perspective and praying blessings on them can — will — change our hearts toward the annoying people in the world. It helps us see them differently. Next time, we’ll tackle another part of this process: how we see ourselves.

Till then, add a comment that tells us how you deal with annoying people.