Love Thy Neighbor
When Jesus Told Us to Love Our Neighbor He Meant the People at Work Too!
A Pharisee asked Jesus which commandment was the greatest (Matthew 22:36-40). His respone was:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the first and great commandment, and the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
Luke(10:25-28) has a slightly different version of events but the Great Commandments are the same. In Luke, the man asks Jesus who his neighbor is (Luke 10:29). That’s when He gave us the parable of the Good Samaritan. So, if our neighbor is a person in need, then everyone is our neighbor. Because — whether they look like they’re in need or not — every one of us shares similar needs. To name just a few, we want:
- To be loved,
- To have friends / be well thought of,
- To do our best,
- To be in good health,
- To be safe
And we all have issues. Not one of us is perfect, and we can all be pretty annoying at times, whether we want to believe that or not.
When you think about it, that means that the people at work are our neighbors too. Because of that we should be treating each other with kindness, like:
- saying nice things about each other
- helping each other with projects
- answering each others phone
…and there are many more easy and kind things we can do.
I know what you’re thinking: “You just don’t know the jerks I deal with every day.” Sure I do. They’re probably alot like the people I worked with in the corporate universe. I thought they were jerks too, until it dawned on me that there were times when they probably thought I was a jerk too.
Here are some strategies you can try that can help you grow in your efforts to apply Jesus’ commandment to ‘Love your neighbor” at work, treat coworkers better, and help you think about them as neighbors…
