Love is the ability to peacefully co-exist especially in disagreement

Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

It is. The fact is we truly do not love another person if we cannot allow them the freedom to arrange and configure, to decide no less, their own thoughts.

Many people will find this concept too hard to agree with, however. There is too much conflict right before our eyes. Conflict with those who hold our attention, with those we care about, with those we’re enmeshed with.

If we let them think what they want we would give them permission to be right and, therefore, we must be wrong. But there is empowerment, relationally, when we move past right and wrong. A more powerful kind of agreement occurs when a relationship is safe in disagreement.

It is precious licence we give to each other not be pressured nor coerced nor need to be influenced.

Love is the ability to peacefully
co-exist especially in disagreement.

Linger on it for a few seconds… love in this way is maturity. Mature people don’t need to twist people’s arms around their backs. They happily accept that you remain unconvinced and there they’ll stay; happy to let you remain unconvinced. Indeed, they’ll defend your right to be convinced.

So, you disagree. Good. Can there not still be love? Can there still not be a willingness to be a brother or sister? Do we need to agree on everything?

Can’t we laugh at the devil for seeing his wicked trick to divide us? Oh, that devil must be confounded when we can laugh with each other in agreeing that we can hold vastly differing views!

Love gives the other the freedom
to choose what their conscience decides.

Love that lets the other decide
has come truly to the destination of trust.

Love that graces a person with the power that they can choose is the greatest gift other than the Son Himself. Acceptance of the Son is life, and so is the love that accepts another person’s conviction.

Of course, our setting here is the context of any peer relationship; any human connection where love is a choice.

Love is the ability to peacefully
co-exist especially in disagreement.

Love like this is a trust entirely reliable.
It says, ‘I accept you no matter what you think,
and I trust you to think as your conscience leads.’

Of the gravest choices a human being can make, we can still offer our love, even as we visit someone we know who is on death row. We don’t agree with what they did, but we sure can love them. It’s the love that sets affection apart from consequences.

Love can set affection apart from consequences,
like the parent that sits with their
incarcerated child as they weep together.