Half As Well As They Deserve

“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.” (JRR Tolkien). If I can squint, I can almost make sense of this compliment from Bilbo Baggins that seems both back-handed and front-handed. But I want to focus on the concept of liking people half as well as they deserve. There are all kinds of reasons that we may take it into our heads or our hearts to dislike or despise our neighbors. Some of these may seem to us to be well-earned and justified. But at the end of the day, if we believe that we know even our closest neighbor anything like half as well as we should, then we are sorely mistaken. We don’t know even one percent of the whole truth. There are so many hidden tragedies and wounds and sicknesses and unresolved traumas that most of us never reveal to anyone. If we really, really knew the kinds of things that those we have decided to dislike are dealing with, then we would be forced to admit that they are holding up surprisingly well,and in fact, much better than we suspect we would be able to manage under a similar burden. We can’t always help making these kinds of judgments against people since we only see the immediate results of their actions and not the whole chain of consequences that have led them to that moment. But what we can do is try to love and serve everybody, even and perhaps especially, those whom we like less than half as well as they deserve. The more that we serve them, even if we find them annoying or petty or ungrateful, the more that the love of Christ will knit our hearts together with the bonds of charity, and the greater insight we will gain into their lives and to the reasons that they act and behalf the way that they do. And the more we serve them and get to know them and understand them, the more we will begin to like them. Service which may at first be grudging will eventually become glad. And love which may at first seem half-hearted will give way to loving with all of our hearts.