When we hear “Love keeps no record of wrongs,” I’m guessing we all get the same mental picture. A wife keeps things bottled up, and finally explodes. Her husband then, feeling hurt and attacked himself, unleashes his unholy wrath on her: explaining to her in full every one of her little failures (as many as he can remember). She then, vulnerable now herself, digs back up the twenty things he’s ever done which hurt her the most. He then reminds her about how she was especially cruel and unloving herself at several critical moments.
Many of the points Paul makes about what love is and what love isn’t are easy to see in a non-romantic way. This one, for me, is particularly hard...mostly because of that one clear visual I get.
Understanding the verse this way, we think “in a relationship between a husband and a wife, isn’t it so much better to forgive and forget?” Wouldn’t the marriage be that much stronger if a husband can just forgive his wife for the things that she has done that hurt him the most and move on, never throwing it back in her face?
Maybe so.
But I’m not so sure that Paul is saying that.
We have this pretty picture. This idea that keeping record of wrongs happens in a marriage, or maybe a dating relationship. Almost all of us over the age of 12 have experienced this with our significant others at some point or another, and we know how much it hurts. So, we rearrange Paul’s words until they say “Love doesn’t throw past wrongs into each other’s faces.” I would imagine that if we could ask Paul about this, he might say, “Well, yeah, I mean, I agree...love doesn’t do that either...but that’s not quite what I meant...”
Love keeps no record of wrongs. In “the Message” it’s translated “Love doesn’t keep score of the sins of others.” Again, man, I really love this “Message” translation of things. Sometimes, it just really clears things up a little. Woah! Keeping score? I’m personally guessing that it’s like golf, where you want the lowest score, although, I’m fairly sure I’ve got one of those pinball game scores, where you end up with over 45 million by the end of round one.
You know how sometimes, you’re playing -- volleyball, for example -- and there’s always that guy that says, “Let’s just play for fun. Let’s not keep score!”
...
No, asshole! If you don’t keep score, it’s not fun!
I’m a pretty competitive guy. And one thing I’ve noticed is that sometimes I’m REALLY competitive, and sometimes I’m so competitive that nobody wants to play with me. If I lose poker, I’m not really too worried about it. If I lose spades, I’m likely to storm out of the room. If I lose at monopoly, I may not speak to anyone for a few days. (don’t worry, it doesn’t happen very often).
But there’s one game that is the most important. The one where it is totally important to win the most. And that is the “You Suck As a Person” game. (I would have called it the game of life, but then I would have had to make a joke about how I wasn’t talking about the one you were thinking of, and that was just going to be a bad joke...so we’re going with the “You Suck As a Person” game. It also really fits).
It’s important for me to be good at Monopoly. It’s something I take great pride in. Waaay more important is proving that I have the lowest possible score in the “You Suck As a Person” game. And this means keeping track of what other people’s scores are. We have to make sure our score is lower than theirs after all.
But of course, we don’t know what’s going on with them 24/7. So we pick out our favorite sins...and I’m not just talking about Christians here. Although, yes, Christians are definitely some of the worst about this, everybody picks out the sin that they think is the worst (hint: it’s usually one they don’t do themselves) and keep real close count on how badly everybody else is doing. For environmentalists, it’s what a crappy job this person is doing taking care of our planet. For animal rights activists, it’s look at how badly that person treats animals! For a lot of Christians, it’s “look how gay that guy is!” For conservatives, it’s “look how lazy those poor people are!” For liberals, it’s “look how greedy and uncaring that wealthy businessman is!” For me, personally, it’s “look how hypocritical that Christian is! They’re painting such a terrible picture of Christ!”
We all keep score. Every last one of us. The trouble is, we’re playing solitaire. We want to win so bad that we look down on everyone around us.
Love doesn’t keep score. Love just loves.
I’ve heard that the problem with “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is that you’re looking at them as a sinner. Not a brother, not a friend, a person to just pour love out on...a sinner...someone with a higher score than you. It seems a little weird to apply “Love the sinner, hate the sin” to a pastor, doesn’t it? Hmmm...and yet, the pastor is also a sinner...do you see?
We’re all sinners. And our scores are all in the millions. Don’t love the sinner and hate the sin. Just love.
Back to our married couple -- who’s keeping track of how they’ve hurt each other and throwing it back into their spouse’s face. At the point where the insults begin, what’s happening? They feel threatened. They feel like their spouse is saying “you’re a bad person! In the “You Suck As a Person” game, you have a way higher score than me!” and so they feel the need to prove that, actually, no...YOU have the higher score. And it just escalates.
Isn’t that why people want absolutely nothing to do with Christians? Because we label them “sinner.” Because we hold ourselves on these pedestals and tell them that we are absolutely willing to explain to them in full why they have a massive score at the “You Suck as a Person” game, and that we’re totally shooting double birdies.
What if we treated them like equals. What if we treated them like friends. Brothers. Sisters.
What if we just loved them without qualifying who is better than who?
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