Unlovable During Covid-19

June 29, 2020 Roland Kuhl 1 Comment

I realize that I am becoming cynical in these times we are in.

Amid Covid-19 and people refusing to wear masks because it hinders their freedom,

Amid the response to the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis (though that is not the only killing and the only community that should grab our attention) and people refusing to support Black Lives Matter, demanding equal time for All Lives Matter, refusing to embrace perspectives and actions that are anti-racist, I am coming to the realization that I find people to be basically unlovable. 

I am realizing that it is really hard for me to love people – I can be loving, but in my heart people are starting to piss me off.

And in light of my own incapability of loving people, I am all the more amazed that God loves us, in fact deeply loves us, passionately loves us – and I am in awe of how deep and unfathomable the love of God is for us unlovable people. 

Yes, I have become cynical over the past few weeks.

Like when I go to stores about every two weeks to get what is needed amid the Covid-19 pandemic.  Going to grocery story, Walmart, (Menards may still be an exception) seeing people disregarding others by not wearing masks, not adhering to social distancing, coughing near others without covering their mouths – I feel like saying, “Get away from me” (or worse), but I don’t – I just glare for a second or so. 

I read an analogy a few weeks back comparing not wearing masks with not wearing pants.  If I wear pants, but you don’t and you pee in public, my pants will protect me a little, but they’ll still get wet; but if you’re wearing pants and wet yourself, only your pants get wet, I stay dry.  You wearing pants may not keep you from wetting yourself, but it protects me, protects others.

Same with masks – the kind of masks we wear do not protect the wearer, rather, we wear masks to protect other people.  Masks are meant to stop the spreading of our droplets in public, spreading Covid-19 to others especially if we are asymptomatic.  My wearing a mask protects you and you wearing a mask protects me.  So, when you don’t wear a mask in my presence, you’re “pissing all over me.” 

Mask wearing is an act of being concerned, of caring, for our neighbors, being our brothers and sisters’ keepers. And it seems we are not doing that all too well – and so, I wear a mask to protect others, others don’t seem to give a rip about me – so, I am not feeling very loving towards others.

But that’s not the only thing going on.

We are seeing the renewed violence of systemic racism in our country.  The practice of not only Minneapolis police, but a common practice among many police departments in subduing suspects, is using a knee on the neck to immobilize people – with George Floyd it ended his life.  So, we are in the midst of discussing our sin of racism once again – and rightly so – until we address systemic racism in our country, until we become advocates for anti-racism, which we do not seem to have the courage to do. 

So, rampant among positive messages are messages expressing hatred. Facebook and Twitter are aflame with racist comments meant to anger, incite, agitate. 

People are pissing all over one another.

So, what does this have to do with the love of God?

Well, it amazes me how deeply God loves uncaring, ignorant, selfish, self-interested, racist, violent, hateful people like us. 

People all around us who only care about themselves, me included – and God loves them and me anyway.

People who act out of self-interest with no thought about their neighbor – and God loves them and me anyway.

People who express hate and violence treating neighbors as strangers and/or enemies – and God loves them all, No matter how unlovable we are, God loves us with a love that is passionate, deep, embracing of each one of us.

We read of God’s love towards unlovable people in Hosea 11.  The people of God had become detestable in their rejection of God and others, but God loves them anyway. God expresses, “How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? . . . My heart recoils within me;  my compassion grows warm and tender” (Hosea 11:8). 

God in becoming human in Jesus, entered into our brokenness, our unlovableness, our unlovingness.  God loved us so deeply that God took on our humanity, and rather rejecting us face to face, instead God expresses unconditional love and grace to us face to face.

Paul in Romans 8 writing about the love of God, expresses that there is absolutely nothing in the world, nothing that is able to separate us from God’s love for us.

And so in the midst of Covid-19, in the midst of our racist attitudes, God loves us anyway, God loves us deeply. God loves us when we are at our most unlovable and unloving.

And that amazes me. I have no words for it.

I am unable to fathom the depth of God’s love for people who are “pissing all over me,” “pissing all over others.”

I had an experience years ago of how deep God’s love is.

I had read about a way of praying practiced by a Presbyterian missionary to the Philippines – Frank Laubach. He would pray for people as he walked down the street, just a sentence prayer as he went along his day. People he did not know; he prayed for people whom he passed by, people who passed him by.

I thought I would try that one day traveling from home to my office – about 9 miles, 15 minutes.

As I headed out, I passed a school bus and lifted up a prayer for the bus driver with all the screaming kids in the back;

As I passed a school and saw 4 teenagers in a convertible without a care in the world, I prayed for their safety;

As I stopped at an intersection, I prayed for the driver of the car in the lane next to me, and the one sitting in the car on the opposite of the street waiting for the light to change;

As I drove further, I saw a mother with kids in a minivan and lifted up a prayer for her and her family that day. 

About half way to work, I had to pull over. 

I became so overwhelmed that tears filled my eyes. 

Here I was praying for people I would probably never meet, but in praying for them, there was a connection and I began to get a tiniest sense of how deep and personal God’s love is for every human person, whoever they are.

I began to get a glimpse of how deeply God cares and loves all these people for whom I was praying.  If I felt this way for people I would never meet or know, how much does God, who knows these people intimately.

I prayed anonymously for them, but God is deeply in love with each one of them.

I got a brief sense of how deep the love of God is – and it was overwhelming.

No matter who we are, what kind of unlovable people we are, God loves us deeply – I realize I don’t have that kind of love in me, but God does. 

God showed the depth of God’s love for us by becoming one of us in Jesus and gave himself for us, even while we were enemies, while we were unlovable, while we acted in ways that betrays and alienates others.

The fact is that not only am I unlovable, I am also unloving (even though I can act loving). 

I have come to realize that everything I am able to be and do is a gift from God.  I do not have enough faith, enough trust, enough hope, and for sure, not enough love. 

But what God requires or demands, God gives.  I don’t have enough faith to trust God, but the faith and trust I do have is all a gift from God.  Likewise, I am unloving, but it is God, amid Covid-19, amid our continuing systemic racism, who enables me to love – to love my wife, my family, my neighbor, those who are strangers to me, even those I might deem to be my enemies.  And in God enabling me to love others, I can even love my unloving self. 

And so I am amazed by God’s love – for me – and how God’s love ignites in me a growing ability to love others who don’t wear masks, who are racist in attitudes and actions. Perhaps by loving them, they might become loving to others.

And so I desire to live into the prayer that Paul prayed with the Ephesians (cf. Eph. 3: 14-19) expressing the depths of God’s love for us:

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.