I want you to know I don't approve of your lifestyle
And why we say things like that, that hurt people
I keep hearing this one question.
And I might dismiss it, except that I keep hearing it from intelligent, self-aware, generally spiritually-tuned-in people. It’s a question I would never think to ask, but since it keeps coming up, here we are.
The question is, when are we loving people too much?
The general premise is that if we love people too much, especially those that live in certain ways, at some point we cross over into tolerating and enabling their sinful behavior. There has to be somewhere that we draw the line. You might hear this as “love the sinner, hate the sin.” The idea says that at some point we must wield the sword of righteousness, that we must reprove betimes with sharpness, and that since we’ve been warned, we must warn our neighbor—even if the wicked take the truth to be hard.
I’ve even heard this described as being one of the two great commandments. The first is to love God, of course, and the second is to love our neighbor. Some people believe that the first is a counterpoint to the second, that loving God puts a cap on how much we can love our neighbor. If we love God, then we’ll defend His gospel by speaking out against sin. We’ll love our neighbor right up to the point that it encroaches on loving God. That’s the checks and balances on loving our neighbor.
But that’s not how I see the world.
In my personal discipleship, I’ve decided that I can’t entertain a theological concept of loving too much, or giving too much grace or mercy. I believe that God gives love, grace, and mercy to me in abundance, and that I have both the responsibility and the privilege as a Christian to dispense in the same abundance to others. There’s just not a scenario where I think human beings are capable of loving more than Jesus Christ commanded us to.
Jesus never said to “love the sinner, hate the sin.” He never even said to “love the sinner.” But he did just say to “love.”
In fact, Jesus’s teachings appear to specifically refute this idea that we should limit the love we have for others. He taught us to love even our enemies, to not judge, and to forgive everyone, setting examples where He ate with sinners, touched lepers, and forgave even those who crucified Him. When Jesus said love everyone, He appeared to mean it, without limit.
At most, He said to “go, and sin no more,” but He said that to the woman immediately after shutting down those who wanted to stone her. If we apply that scripture story, we’re both the woman—sinful, sure, but not condemned by God—and the hypocrites, the people wanting to exact our own crooked understanding of the gospel on those we see as more sinful than ourselves.
It strikes me that when we’re asked to keep the commandments, this is an individual directive to each of us: I’ve been asked to keep the commandments, and so have you. This is a personal thing we can each do. But we haven’t been asked to ensure that everybody else is keeping the commandments. That’s just not what we’ve been asked to do. Our job is to love our neighbor, not police our neighbor.
So, where’s the value here? What’s the benefit? What do we get out of drawing a line for where our kindness and forgiveness will end?
We see this at its most exaggerated with the LGBTQ+ community; some people feel a need to wear on their sleeve that they will be intolerant and unsafe to children of God who identify in these ways. This concept of telling people, “I don’t approve of your lifestyle,” as a way to elevate ourselves over others, to draw lines between who we see on the side of righteousness and who we don’t, is distinctly antithetical to what Jesus taught.
In addition to not being Christ-like, this can be exactly this kind of outward disapproval that contributes to higher rates of suicidal thoughts and behaviors in the LGBTQ+ community.1 We tend to think of bullying as something that happens with kids, at school; this is adult bullying.
We don’t do this with other things. We don’t say, “Karen, I need you to know that I don’t approve of your gossiping lifestyle.” “If you’re going to live under this roof, there won’t be any of that not-paying-tithing going on.” “You know those coffee drinkers, they’re always trying to force their lifestyle down your throat.”2 These examples are, of course, ridiculous.
In some cases, such as with the LGBTQ+ community, the mindset seems to line up with political ideologies. Much of politics in the United States right now seems to be focused on telling people what they can and can’t do, and who deserves to have rights and who doesn’t. There are cases where politicians lean in to cruelty, and assert that God is behind it. Many people are more worried about whether ideas are right or left than if they’re right or wrong.
You never have to like the ways that people sin, or the choices they make. I don’t like the ways that I sin, or all the choices I make, let alone those of others. But judging others for their choices, especially vocally, is simply not what Jesus did, and it’s not part of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The love that Jesus Himself demonstrated was complete, and full, all the way down to Him giving His life for you, and for me. Flawed and sinful as we all are.
Elder Holland powerfully taught it like this:
We are supposed to be Christ-like, we are supposed to be charitable, we are supposed to demonstrate love; but he is saying that were it not for real charity, capital C, the one time in all the world that real charity was demonstrated, i.e., the pure love of Christ — if it were not for that, “we could not inherit that place which thou has prepared in the mansions of thy Father.”
This is the charity that saves. This is the charity that faileth not. Ours does not always save and it does sometimes fail. As much as we try, we fall short. But one time, by one Person, the pure love of Christ was demonstrated. Real charity was given to this world. Christ loved us perfectly and it lasts forever. That’s why we can say that real charity, never faileth. He never fails us.
Can we love people too much?
Did Christ love us too much? Does Jesus Christ’s unending mercy mean that He’s too tolerant of the things we do? Is the Savior of all mankind enabling our sinful behavior by forgiving us?3
God has given us commandments and asked us to follow them; this is something only God can do. In Their infinite wisdom, our Heavenly Parents have perfectly blended justice and mercy—but They did not ask us to be just. They only asked us to be merciful. They asked us to love Them, and each other.
I don’t know what this looks like in real life. We all need to “go, and sin no more.” And somewhere along the line, we need to shed the need—and the sin—of judging others.
See what I did there? Coffee, down your throat? Never mind.
There’s probably a need to be trauma-informed here. This doesn’t mean we need to allow people to be abusive to us, etc.
This is excellent. Thank you as always for writing. I was in a church meeting sometime in the last few years where the teacher was teaching in this way—that we have to make sure that people know that we do not approve of their lifestyle. It was a really hard discussion to sit through.
My hope is that as more of us talk about the two great commandments being the most important thing, more people will begin to understand that that really is all that matters.
“Real charity was given to this world.” To the World! We forget that THE WORLD houses all our Heavenly Parents children, not just those who think they’re more righteous than their brothers and sisters. That line alone says it so clearly and distinctly. Great insight. Thank you.