“Love is the medicine for the sickness of the world.” So said noted psychiatrist Dr. Karl Menninger. He summarized his therapeutic approach this way: “Love cures. It cures those who give it, and it cures those who receive it.”

The second quote is from someone perhaps more universally known than Dr. Menninger. Linus Van Pelt from the Peanuts comic strip said, “I love mankind…It’s people I can’t stand!!”

In our evermore polarized society, we might be more in agreement with Linus than Dr. Menninger. Polarization is to see those with whom we disagree as “others.” Then deem the “others” as unlikeable, untrustworthy, and morally compromised. How is love the medicine for the sickness of polarization and brokenness in the world?

To seek to understand how we can love the people in this world, we turn to Paul’s well-known words in 1 Corinthians 13. Famously read at weddings and placed on greeting cards, these words were actually addressed to a polarized and divided church in Corinth. They weren’t flowery words of some ideal. They were marching orders for the followers of Christ who were falling far short of reflecting the humble, other-oriented, self-sacrificial, enemy-embracing love of God. Paul was trying to show the Corinthians that, in the end, nothing matters more than the answer to the question – are you living out the love of God revealed in Christ?