Contemplation Corner: “To love someone means to see them as God intended them.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Pastor Donnie Brooks

   We like to see things to believe in them. This is our way. This is the west. Even if we don’t see things rightly, we’d rather see them and see them wrongly than not see them at all. Often we see people in such a way that helps us to seem them wrongly. See them as we want to see them. See them as our prejudices tell us to see them. See them as the profiteers of bigotry and hate want us to see them. See them as our divisiveness and tribal-self-focus wants us to see them.

   It is much harder to see them as we would want to be seen ourselves. Jesus tells us to “love God” and “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Rarely do we love our neighbor, let alone ourselves. If we loved God, too, we’d love ourselves and love our neighbor. The start of love means to see others as God intends them to be seen. When God looks upon us, he just so happens to see us in our transformed state. Yes, he is working us towards that transformed Christ-like state. Our theosis. But he sees us even now as these things. This is the way love sees. It sees transformation. It sees potential. It desires for it and works towards it. 

   Why could we imagine that we could love God without striving to do precisely as He does? That is, to see others as God does? To love others as God loves us. When we look at this new year ahead of us, may we begin to see ourselves as God sees us and so love ourselves. May we see our neighbor as God sees them, and so love our neighbor. And may we see God in the way God sees Godself. That is in, through, and with love. Triune relational love.

   Dostoevsky hit something here just as he did through his many great novels. He gives us so much to think about, his characters, whether positively or negatively, give us food for thought and direct us to consider our ways just as we might consider and ponder about God’s ways. He probed so deeply into the human psyche and whether it is Brothers Karamazov, or Crime and Punishment, or The Idiot, or The Demons, or others, he challenges us to look to God, neighbor, and ourselves for challenge and fulfillment in life. May our new year be filled with both and guide us, each other, and our society towards better ways. Where we see one another as God sees us.

Pastor Donnie Brooks
Marcellus United Methodist Church

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