By Charles Barnard
The next love characteristic is still another of the negatives. We have love is not envious. Love is not boastful. Love is not proud, among others. Today, we will look at love does not dishonor others. Again, while it is important to not dishonor others, we do need to understand what the opposite of the negative is. In training this characteristic, we do want to train the dual – not dishonoring and learning to honor. It is more about not dishonoring others than it is doing the opposite, but doing the opposite is still an attribute of love. Let’s take a look first at what it means to not dishonor others.
Continuing with the Christian thinking, one of the 10 commandments is to honor your mother and father. For some people, who have grown up in very difficult family situations, the idea of honoring their mother and or father may be incredibly difficult. If we look closely at that command while analyzing this characteristic of love, maybe we have a better picture of how we could honor the dishonorable. Could it be that someone in this situation could honor their parents by not dishonoring them? Just what does that mean?
One of the meanings of dishonor is to bring shame or disgrace to another. If a person has brought dishonor to themselves to dishonor them would be pointing out their shame or disgrace regularly. Publicly humiliating them or calling out their faults would be to dishonor them.
I have worked with too many students over the years who have had some very difficult family situations, a handful worse than difficult, so in my humble opinion to honor those parents would actually be to not dishonor them and publicly or even personally call attention to their shame and disgrace. To honor them might actually be forgiving them and letting go of the anger no matter how righteous that anger may be.
While not dishonoring is the essence of this characteristic, a person with a love mindset will also look to honor those who need to be honored. They will show respect for their fellow man. Again, for those who are undeserving of your respect or being honored – the dishonorable, we simply do not need to publicly bring attention to the behaviors that should bring shame and disgrace to their name. They have done that to themselves. We don’t need to draw further attention to it. This is not to say we do not seek justice, whatever that might mean for the situation. It simply means we do so as quietly and privately as possible.
Because not dishonoring others is a behavior of not doing like several on the list, you would want to regularly reflect about how you did not doing that behavior, but you will also focus on doing the opposite – honoring those who should be honored and respected. You should be looking for those people who have done something, anything, that you believe is worthy of attention and honoring. How publicly you want to do the honoring will be your decision, but you should seek to honor people regularly while you are also working on the trait of not dishonoring. You can honor someone even if it is for some of the most simple but admirable qualities you want to reinforce in your friends, family, and colleagues.
