Love The Person Located Next To You Like Yourself

 To love your neighbor isn't some grand gesture. It doesn't require going out and doing what is considered great humanitarian work (though there is certainly nothing wrong with that!). It is literally and simply to love the person next to you like you love yourself, whoever it might be. Literally the person standing right next to you at the moment, or sitting right next to you at the moment in whatever moment and location in which you happen to be. 

     If the person standing next to you is a family member, love them like yourself. If it is a stranger whom you've never seen before, love them like yourself. If they're homeless, love them like yourself. If they're wealthy, love them like yourself. If the person standing next to you is an immigrant, love them like yourself. If the person standing next to you at the moment happens to be gay, happens to be transgender, happens to be from a different ethnic, social, financial, cultural, or linguistic background from yourself, love them like yourself. See them as yourself. Try to step into their shoes and into their worldview. If you had experienced what they had, would you have made different choices from them? If you had been raised the same way, if you had the same biology, the same neural connections, the same history and culture which they had, would you have done anything differently from them? 

     To love is the opposite of fear. Loving the other person as yourself is to stop seeing the other person as a threat or something to fear, and to start seeing them as no different than who you are. The same needs for food, water, shelter, security, love, companionship; the same desires for success in their endeavors, and the same or similar flaws that you yourself have. It means to turn away from your fear and anxiety and to disengage from it.

     But it starts with the person right next to you, no matter who they are. It starts with those closest to you in physical and not just relational proximity. If you live alone in an apartment, it starts with the person living in the apartment next to you. If you have a spouse and children, it starts with them. If you are at work, it starts with your coworkers closest at hand, no matter who they are. It starts with who is right next to you right now in this moment.

     And when we love our neighbor as ourselves, we love God and know God. If we truly love God, then we will love the person next to us. If God is our Source, and each one of us carries a part or shred of His Logos and His Spirit, no matter who we are, then to love one another is to love God. To treat one another how we want to be treated is to treat God that way. To love your enemy is also to love the God of whom your enemy still holds a part, and to recognize that your enemy who hates you is a family member who is ill.

     And the inverse is also true. To hate the person next to us is to hate God Himself. To mistreat the person next to us is to mistreat God Himself. To injure, lie to, hunt, and prosecute the person next to us is to do so to God Himself. And there is a difference between vengeance and justice, because the justice of God seeks to reconcile, restore, and heal the offending person, and not to destroy them as though they were a threat.

     But it starts with the person next to you, right now, in this moment of time. It doesn't matter who it is you see, because whoever it is, whatever their disposition, by loving them you love God.