Seeing Others as God Sees Them

Another way to become more loving is to see people through God's eyes. When we focus on the good in people, it becomes a little easier to be loving towards them. For example, when someone is rude to me on the phone, instead of assuming he or she is just a rude and horrible person who has it in for me I can assume that he or she is having a bad day and is in need of some kindness and encouragement.

We can attribute good motives to our spouses and family members instead of assuming they are doing things to spite us or get to us. That may sound silly, but I often assume bad motives without even realizing it. I assume my kids aren't listening or obeying out of spite, just because I said it. Maybe at times this is true, but it is much more helpful to my attitude to assume that they just didn't hear me or that they got distracted by something else.

C.S. Lewis says it well in The Weight of Glory:

"It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbor. The load, or weight, or burdern of my neighbor's glory should be laid on my back... It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one of these destinations. It is in light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. ... [I]t is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors."

I know this is a long quote, but I hope you all read it carefully. Lewis is saying that we will all live for eternity in one form or another. Either we will spend eternity in glory in the presence of God or we will spend eternity removed from God's presence in absolute horror. Everyone we meet, come across, deal with, and love are in that same position. And we can influence them for the better simply by the way we treat them in everyday interactions. When we are loving towards others, we are encouraging them along the path of glory and greatness. When we are not loving, we are perhaps pushing them down the path towards horror and eternal separation from God.

When we look at our responsibility to be loving from this standpoint, doesn't it seem all that much more important a task? Don't we owe it to others and to our God, who has been so loving towards us, to treat others with that same love? It is as simple as a smile or a kind word. It is in the way we look at others and how we talk about them when they aren't present. It is in how helpful we can be to strangers and those in our own families. Can we live up to this challenge? I hope so! With God's help and our continuing efforts, I think we can.