Love Your __________ Neighbor

Objective
This lesson helps students to identify where weak spots are in their heart as far as loving their neighbor and helps them to see their call to love all people no matter what.

Bible verses 
Mt 5:44 "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you"
Mk 12:31 "Love your neighbor as yourself"

Virtue
Charity- loving someone no matter what.

Description
Love your enemies sounds great in paper, but put it into practice in the reality of gossip, grudges, resentment, competition, or even a middle school classroom and you've got a real challenge. That's why I created this lesson for my students as something to do to strengthen the virtue of charity in our classroom.

We started out by sitting in a circle (VBRD style) and I introduced the idea that there are always people in our lives that are especially hard for us to love. I gave an example to the class first. I told them that arrogant adults can be really hard for me to be patient with or to be charitable toward. Then we passed around a talking piece for each student to share who they struggle to love. They really enjoy this part because EVERYONE has a personality trait or group of people that is a personal pet peeve in this area. Students said everything from obnoxious, mean, stuck up to anti-God, poor, or ugly. They were surprisingly honest.

After they got it all out there I brought it back in by reminding them that, hey, guess what? this shows an area of weakness on our part, not on the part of the people we just complained about. I also reminded them that we all have parts of ourselves that are hard to love but we still want love. (In some classes I add more questions like what part of yourself may be hard to love? or How do you show love to these people even when it is hard?)

One striking example I'll share is that one of our Mexican born students who immigrated to the United States shared that she has a really mean, racist neighbor who she finds very hard to love because of how he treats her. This was a hard but perfect example to use with the class. We acknowledged that his behavior is in need of changing but that she doesn't have any control over his choices. Instead, she has control over her own. She can choose to show him love even if it doesn't feel like he deserves it. Then we talked about how if we start picking and choosing who deserves love we are not imitating Christ's love for us or the many sinners He chose to die for.

Next, I have them listen to the song If We Are the Body by Casting Crowns using this link. They watch the words and take turns going up to write two adjectives on the board pictured below. Essentially it is a board that says: Love Your ___________ Neighbor and they fill in the blank. I let each student write two adjectives while they quietly listened to the song and journaled on what they were getting from the song and the lesson.

Their responses were awesome! One student wrote about how important it is not to pick and choose who should be loved and how Jesus would die for anyone of us but we can't just be loving toward each other. Another student shared how the activity helped them realize that the Body of Christ really has a job in this area and that she needed a reminder. We closed up the lesson with a reading of the verses above.

I decided to make the poster a permanent item in our classroom since it is such a good reminder to students to love those they don't really like to love. They use it in examples all the time and it is a great reminder while they deal with the normal drama of middle school.

In some classes we talked about the difference between liking and loving. In others we tied it into the unchanging dignity of everyone. You can tie this into all sorts of lessons and bend it in whatever way God asks of you.

Grace was there!