Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocricy, envy, and slander of every kind. 1 peter 2:1
Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. 1 peter 4:8
Life is full of hardships and mean people and ludicrous situations that change relationships. As human beings, we are each only one person out of billions. When I think about this fact I'm amazed at the fact that every single person on this planet sees the world in a different light, has their own pasts, their own hurts, their own views, their own destinies. It is so easy to forget that I'm not the only person hurting on this planet, that there are people who are hurting so much more than I am.
When we are angry or envious or jealous towards somebody, it is incredibly easy to forget that person has feelings and a life and a point of view too. We desensitize the object of our ill-feelings because it is so much easier to hate on somebody if we aren't concerned with how we are hurting him/her. It is so much easier to be angry if we are only concerned with ourselves.
But the 1 Peter tells us to cleanse ourselves of any bad feelings (anger, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, judgmental thoughts, slander, jealousy, insensitivity, etc...) and then love every single person we meet, and even those we don't, like it is a life or death situation. Everybody deserves a first, second, fifth, twentieth, and thirty-second chance. Everybody deserves to feel liked and loved and important. So who are we to take any of that away from them? Who are we to pass judgement on a person who leads a life separate from ours, who has real feelings and real thoughts and real ideas?
I keep forgetting the simple fact that I have no right to be angry at a person's actions/words because I have no idea where they come from or why they believe what they do. I don't know anything beyond my own world. There are billions of other little worlds all around me, bumping into and clashing with my own, and each has a right to be here.
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