"For the whole law can be summed up in this one command: "Love your neighbor as yourself." Galatians 5:14

Ouch.

Why do verses like these look so much easier than they actually are? We always think it's so easy to love our neighbours. I mean, we love our friends, we love our family members, the word love is thrown around so often that this should be easy. However, there's one problem that always seems to get us.

We love ourselves way too much. Do you ever realize how many times in one day your turn the conversation back around to you? How everything that someone else is saying has to relate to your story, or you always have an even better story to tell someone than the one that they're already telling. We are a really selfish species.

So then this is where the Bible lesson takes a left turn and just keeps on burning down that path, talking about how you must put people before yourself, always be kind to people, and always try to do good to them. When they somehow happened to breeze over one really important point.

Do you ever realize how much you forgive yourself? How any time you do something wrong, you are immediately able to defend yourself and justify what you did or said, because of course you knew what you were thinking, and you understood your rationale.
Shouldn't that mean that we should pass that blessing onto others? Forgive them when they do something wrong, instead of being so quick to judge? Obviously they were thinking about it, and obviously they have a reason and a rationale, so give it to them. Forgive them as you would forgive yourself.