Recently a friend sent me a picture of Jesus talking to a crowd of people. He was preaching his basic sermon of how all they needed to do was love each other without judgment. One person from the audience asked, “What about people who believe or behave differently than we do?” Jesus’ reply in the cartoon was, “Did I stutter?”

Of course, there is no misinterpreting Jesus simple message of love. You don’t even have to believe in Jesus to know in your heart that love is exactly what he taught, because most of you reading this article agree that each of us is a divine creation with heart energies to offer each other. However, when a heart energy settles into a belief or action that is different from ours, we stop looking for the divine and instead focus, with judgment, on the differences.

You might say that we often stutter in sharing what we know to be true about love. Instead of staying heartfully attuned, we try to impose our small picture of what is right for us onto others. And if we can get some authority to agree with us, it makes us feel justified in looking outward from our small picture rather than looking from our hearts.

I must admit, that holding a steady heart focus on finding the divine in each situation can be a bit difficult. This is probably because as children we were indoctrinated about the dangers lurking in the world. To be safe, we locked ourselves into a rigid belief system so we wouldn’t be a bad, unloving person. While this may have increased our sense of safety, it really did little to expand our ability to love. Instead, this foisting of beliefs on others, instead of covering them with love has caused a lot of stuttering in our world about the truth of love.