FAITH IN THE HUMAN BEING
(Monday, December 11)
“We love because He first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” (1 Jn 4:19b-20)
It’s easier in a way to believe in God, than it is to believe in the human being, I’m thinking this morning. This is why St. John calls us to a reality-check, reminding us that one can’t really love God if one hates another human. Our self-loathing (if unhealed) makes us focus on the worst examples of humanity, both within and outside ourselves, and to draw from those the conclusion that we are some kind of a failed experiment, and all of us are going to hell in a handbasket. Our self-loathing is also a kind of denial of God’s undying love for us and faith in us.
But Christianity proclaims a radical faith in humanity; God’s undying faith in humanity, which is more honorable and honored than the Cherubim, and more glorious and glorified beyond compare than the Seraphim. *We* are also entrusted with God’s revelation of Himself to us; with receiving it and passing it on, from generation to generation, based on human testimony and language, and other messy and fallible human capacities.
May I believe in us today, and embrace the hope and love and patience with us today, that God unchangeably has and extends to each of us daily. I can do that, by opening up to Him in prayer, and letting His divine energies, His faith and His love for all of us, break into my broken and contrite heart. God is the Lord and has appeared unto *us*! Glory be to Him!
