Reflecting this morning on the various people I’ve known up close, from the very affluent to the seriously poor, I recognized decades ago that the rich consider themselves above the law, and at the level of the extremely poor or racially segregated, the law often does not work in their favor.

The middle class has been the lawkeepers.  The middle class is systematically being wiped out.

I am a liberal born-again Christian.  Yes, we do exist.

I see the life of Jesus as fleshing out the WAY for us.  His actions clarify His words.  That’s what His being the “WORD” means. And like us, His life was a journey of being challenged to Love. It started with His mother teaching Him, at twelve, to consider others’ feelings, not just show off His brilliance. Then she literally forced him, at thirty, into risking the leap to doing miracles, out of kindness for a family running out of wine for their child’s wedding reception.

We then hear him questioning whether he should heal the child of the Roman enemy’s soldier, but he chooses to love.  He worked through pretty much every kind of person being a challenge to love until on the cross he could pray, “Father, forgive them. They know not what they do” for those that got Him tortured and killed. Then, even when he felt abandoned by God, he trusted and said, “Into your hands I trust my spirit.”

This opening up to loving those close to Him, until He could love the worst of those putting law over love, is the pattern of growing from need to Love for all of us.

So how do we learn to love like Jesus?  Understanding why they are like they are and recognizing that if we had lived their life, we too might be like them. Understanding frees us to forgive even the oppressors, and forgiving frees us to Love, though we still work for the oppressed, the poor, the prisoner, the leper, the sinner.

If we follow the history of famous achievers, we recognize that very few of their children were achievers.

Achievers, whether Presidents, Generals, Scientists, and those who become ridiculously rich, are usually men whose time and lives were  spent achieving, not loving…..even their family. And their children inherited their money, but not necessarily their brains, ability, or even their perseverance.

What their children have then is money, and money gives both pleasure and power, but not a sense of either responsibility or achievement. They either spend their lives on one or both pleasure or fighting to gain power.

Look at Trump. He literally acts like a spoiled child.  Because that is what he is. Likely, he did not receive a father’s love, affirmation, motivational challenges to do good, or any sense of self-worth other than through his money.  His journey from need to love never even began. He is, literally, a lost child in a scary world filled with other rich people and governments with power.  He does not see the BIG picture, and he has probably never even had much chance to know, nevertheless care, about people with different kinds of lives.

This doesn’t mean we don’t work hard to stop his short-sighted and destructive choices. All it means is we don’t hate him any more than we would a child with misunderstood ways of coping in the world.

Hating him, attacking him personally, alienates him further from the people he doesn’t understand. Attack the choices he makes. But let’s get over our self-righteousness.  I am eighty-eight, and I spend nights recognizing the mistakes I made in being there for others, even those I loved, both in what I did or said and in what I didn’t do or say because they were different from me. I did not understand their strengths, weaknesses, vulnerabilities, life experiences, or wounds.

That’s what old age is about. Learning to walk humbly with our God, by knowing we are loved, no matter what, because our heavenly Father has the knowledge, understanding, and the freedom to love that our parents didn’t and we also don’t.