Can You Love Someone and Still Judge Them?
Today I want to talk about love.
Not romantic love. Not the love we have for our children. I mean the big one. The all-encompassing kind.
I was talking to my sister recently. As usual, it was supposed to be a normal conversation and somehow turned into a three-hour philosophical investigation into the nature of existence. At some point we got onto this particular kind of love. That feeling that can sometimes come over you when you look at another being and suddenly feel an almost inexplicable tenderness towards them. Not because you know them. Not because they have done anything to deserve it. They just exist.
Like the love you can feel for a stranger on the street. Or for a bird that suddenly lands beside you. Or for a tree moving in the wind. And for a brief moment, something in you goes: Oh, I love you. There is no argument to be made. No reason. Just recognition.
And then my sister asked me the obvious follow-up question: Does that love include people who are currently doing a tremendous amount of harm? Specifically, she asked about a very prominent, very right-wing person who shall remain unnamed here, because I have no interest in giving them any more attention.
I laughed. Yes. It does.
And this is where things get uncomfortable. Because I can love someone and think what they are doing is horrific. I can love someone and want them stopped. I can love someone and hold them accountable. I can love someone and have absolutely no interest whatsoever in having dinner with them. These things are not mutually exclusive.
I think this is where the New Age concept of non-judgment becomes particularly absurd. There is this idea floating around in spiritual spaces that judging people is somehow inherently unspiritual. That we should accept everyone and everything because we are all one. Which is a very convenient philosophy if you don't want to confront anything.
But universal love, as I understand it, does not mean suspending discernment. It doesn't mean pretending that harm isn't harm. It doesn't mean refusing to hold people accountable. And it certainly doesn't mean watching injustice unfold with a serene smile and a hand on your heart because everything is happening for a reason.
Please.
Love can say: this is wrong.
Love can draw a boundary.
Love can resist.
Love can intervene.
In fact, if I really believe that we are connected, then indifference becomes much harder to justify. Because the suffering of another person is not entirely separate from my own.
You see, my spiritually curious friend, this is where universal love becomes something I find much more interesting than the usual spiritual version of it. It is not particularly practical. You can't manufacture it. You can't affirm your way into it. Sure, you can cultivate empathy. You can practice compassion. You can learn to see another person's humanity even when you profoundly disagree with them. But there is also something else. Something much stranger, something bigger. A kind of recognition that precedes reasoning.
That the person I despise is also a person. That they, too, were once a cute baby. That they, too, came from somewhere. That they, too, are part of this strange and bewildering thing we call existence. And I don't mean that metaphorically. I mean it in the almost mystical sense — something you don't just understand, but somehow know.
I was raised Christian enough to have Sunday school permanently installed somewhere in the back of my brain, so naturally I also thought of Jesus saying: Forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Which, frankly, is a much more radical idea than most of the inspirational quotes currently circulating on Instagram.
To all the conservatives and Christfluencers out there: Jesus was radical, in case you hadn't noticed.
Perhaps universal love is not about becoming so spiritually evolved that nothing bothers you anymore. Perhaps it is the opposite. Perhaps it asks you to see more clearly. To see the harm. To name it. To resist it. And still refuse to reduce another human being to the worst thing they have done.
I don't know exactly what that requires of us. And I'm increasingly suspicious of people who claim to have the answer. Or, worse, have already looked it up in some book.
I've been thinking and writing about love a lot lately. Some of these thoughts are making their way into the book I'm currently writing. The rest, apparently, are still making trouble in my head.
For now, I'll leave you with this:
Can you love someone and still judge them?
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Gracias. Thank you. Jërëjëf. Merci. Obrigada. Danke. Arigatō. Medaase. Grazie. Hvala. Tack. Asante. Shukran. Teşekkürler. Dziękuję.
