By Brian Grim
Christmas is a season that calls us back to what matters most — love. Even in secular culture, this truth resonates. The #1 most searched Christmas movie in America is Love Actually, a story that celebrates love as the force that binds us together. For people of faith, love is not just a feeling, it is a commandment. Jesus, for example, said the greatest commandments are to love God and love our neighbor.
But who is our neighbor? In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus makes it clear: our neighbor may be someone very different from us, a foreigner, even from another faith. Love was not shown by preaching to the wounded man left for dead on the roadside. It was shown through mercy, compassion, and practical help: binding wounds, providing shelter, and ensuring care.
True religious freedom is the freedom to live out these commandments. In fact, the deepest way to love God may be through loving our neighbor because that is where we encounter the divine most profoundly. This experience surpasses even the beauty of scripture, music, prayer, or the grandeur of nature, from galaxies expanding across the cosmos to the mysteries of subatomic particles. The most infinite beauty is love itself.
And as we love our neighbor, it is not about them seeing God in us, it is about us seeing God in them. This is the heart of religious freedom: the freedom to practice love. When we do this, religious freedom flourishes on earth.
This Christmas, let us make love our greatest gift because in loving our neighbor, we encounter the divine.