I always find it odd when someone tells me "you can't relate"—isn't that an odd thing to say? It creates an inexorable paradox: You're making a claim that I am incapable of having any knowledge of your inner person, while at the same time making a claim that you know mine perfectly. You are saying you know me better than I know you, which may be true in theory, but it still stands to reason that I should be given the benefit of the doubt in practice. Maybe I don't understand the details of what’s happening, but maybe I have experienced things you have no idea about that make it entirely possible for me to understand what you mean on a deeper level.
There’s an expression in Arabic "حافظ مش فاهم" which literally means "memorizing without understanding.” There are many things I have thought about and written about that really don’t matter at all as an intellectual exercise. Their true value comes if and when we are invited to live them out in real life.
"Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails." - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 NKJV
"Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me." - Philippians 3:12 NKJV
"That Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." - Ephesians 3:17-19 NKJV
"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God." - 1 Corinthians 1:18 NKJV
"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: 'For Your sake we are killed all day long; We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.' Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 8:35-39 NKJV
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Storm_on_the_Sea_of_Galilee
It is theoretically possible that I am a cold, insensate, opaque, obtuse, loquacious boor who doesn’t understand anything meaningful about anyone in my life. It is a fact that some people are more relatable, and some of us need to work harder to connect with people. The question of whether this is genetic, based on childhood, or some other kind of nature/nurture debate is immaterial - the key is that it is not a deliberate choice by the boor to be a boor.
**“**Jesus set before me the book of nature. I understand how all the flowers God had created are beautiful, how the splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not take away the perfume of the violet or the delightful simplicity of the daisy. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness.” ****- St. Therese of Liseux, “The Little Flower of Jesus”
I am content to the little flower of empathy — I can’t pretend to know exactly what anyone is feeling at any given moment. I try to understand, but that understanding will always be imperfect, and perhaps more imperfect than the imperfection of others who are more empathetic than I am. That is ok, and I try extend the same grace to others that I ask for myself, which is to hold each other to High Standards of Repentance, not of Perfection.
It makes perfect human sense to love those who are similar to us, who fulfill our needs, and who boost our self-esteem. It takes a madman to love those who fall short or even contradict these self-gratifying aspects of relationships. Christ is a madman who loves us madly, and I want to keep doing my best to love you as Christ loves us.