As I have loved you

That was the next step, right? "As I have loved you, love one another."

He calls it a new commandment right there, too. 

For the previous iteration, whether we are looking at "Love they neighbor as thyself" or "Do unto others as you would have others do to you", the viewpoint is centered on the self: what would I want?

The distinction might have something to do with our thoughts not being the same as His thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8)

I got into a weird frame of mind here, thinking that it is saying that we should do for people what they need rather than what they want, which doesn't sound good.

There can be a level at which that is true and right. The easiest example may be that parents not letting their child stay up all night or eat only candy, because that would be bad for them. That can be very loving, and something children will appreciate more as they grow. 

However, because there is that element of "I know best" to it, and we often don't know best, it seemed destined for failure.

I understood fairly easily that sometimes people will want different things than we would want. 

I know a lot of people make fun of The Five Love Languages now. I am willing to agree that there are ways in which it oversimplifies, but when I read it I was very impressed. Partners can have different preferences. Sometimes not having your preference honored is really hurtful. 

I know one person who was consistently sad that her boyfriend did not care about birthdays so ignored hers. She knew he didn't care, but she did and she communicated that she did, and he still ignored it. "Loving" her the way he preferred did not feel loving to her. Was that fair or logical? Maybe not, and maybe that was not the most important issue in the breakup. 

It didn't help.

Maybe the reason I struggled with the entire concept was that sometimes we don't know what we want or we want something wrong... would you do give someone something bad for them if that's what they wanted?

Clearly I got caught up in this conundrum where I was fixating on other people's desires rather than how the love of Christ works.

Remember when I spent months on the topic of "Trying to be like Jesus"? (That was from February to August of 2017.) Fortunately there were some insights there. 

One of them started with thinking about the examples we have of the blind being healed, and how the methods were different, where I began to believe there were lessons there.

https://preparedspork.blogspot.com/2017/04/trying-to-be-like-jesus-healing-blind.html 

I started seeing a pattern of knowledge that was used to make those experiences more personally helpful.

Think of the woman with the issue of blood in Matthew 9. She wanted to be healed, and believed that just touching his robe would do it. She succeeded, and could have been satisfied with just that.

Identifying her, however, and letting her know that her faith had done it, well... that would give her a greater understanding of spiritual things, which would have an important influence on her life. In addition, being noticed by him, as an individual, must have been very powerful.

The problem with trying to love like Jesus is that we do not have the knowledge or the power to understand what people need and be able to grant it, at least not all of the time.

We do know that he loved us enough and respected our right to choose enough to atone for our sins and heal our infirmities. That can be our sign not to force anything on anyone.

Then, for being loving, we can at least try and be understanding, especially when there are differences.

We can respect others' choices, even when we see clear problems.

We can try and help people without judging whether they got themselves into the mess or not, but we can also be honest about the problems, so not enabling.

That's a difficult balance for imperfect people; we are sure to make mistakes.

He has compassion on us when we make those mistakes, and appreciates our attempts.

Go and do likewise.