On Loving Difficult People And, Being Loved As A “Difficult Person”…

With all that Jesus had done for these men, why would they betray him without hesitation?

I look at Jesus depicted in our four canonical gospels and He, the Messiah, has literally done everything right and He is still abandoned, betrayed, denied and essentially left alone by His twelve closest friends. Roman soldiers had to “compel” Simon of Cyrene, seemingly a stranger to Jesus, to help Him carry the cross the rest of the way.

Although it’s arguably conjecture, I’m lead to believe they betrayed Him out of fear and self-preservation.

But, really, I don’t know…

What I do know is that many times, it’s not that you are difficult to love, it’s that one person or a particular group of people have difficulty loving you. That’s not your fault, that’s not on you, and neither is it your responsibility to have to change who you are in order to be accepted and loved by them.

This is why we relate to and support forms of civil rights movements regarding race, gender, or sexuality; as Dr. Maureen Osborne says so eloquently, “the main thing they all share is the struggle to be authentic, to be known, to be heard and received. It is truly a civil rights struggle…”

The very people in which the religious leaders were exiling, belittling, and literally pushing outside of their Temple gates were the very people Jesus was spending the majority of His ministry with. Jesus went to the unclean and miraculously made them clean; He went to those deemed worthless and gave them worth; He dined with both the prostitutes and the Pharisees.

The common theme between the religious elite and the woman at the well is that both desperately desired the same exact thing: love and acceptance.

If “everything is spiritual” then relationships and community are messy forms of spirituality. It’s as if we’re all blindly wading through a swamp trying to miraculously find a small group of people that will help make this shit-hole, at least, half-way bearable.

I think Jesus put it best by saying, “The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look at this glutton and drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and of sinners!’ But wisdom is vindicated by her actions (Matthew 11:19).”