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Can You Love Someone Despite Their Decisions/Choices

I think it depends on who you ask. Based on our society and community day with “cancel culture” the answer is “No”. If someone doesn’t agree with you push them away, you spew hate, you do everything but love them. But, where does this lead and take us? It brings us to a more divided and separated group of people. 

I believe you can love someone despite their decisions. I mean look at your parents. How many times have you done something and despite that they came and loved you through it? The best example is Daryl Davis. For those who don’t know him, Daryl is an African-American man who friends a grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert White.  Despite their differences, they actually become best friends and Robert stepped down from the Ku Klux Klan. If you haven’t seen the TED Talk I highly recommend watching it. 

The hardest part of loving and caring for someone despite their decisions is putting your values onto them. How many times were we told as a child to do something by our parents and we refused to do it? How many times now when you are older do you look back and say “they were right”? I think the best thing to do is be present, love the kids, and live out your values. Based on that people get to see the true you 

For youth workers, we work with kids who makes bad decision after bad decision. If we just canceled and pushed our kids away we would be just like society. We need to be there for them despite their decisions. We need to love and live out the values we want to instill in our youth to better their lives. By doing this we can start seeing the change we desperately want. 

To fully love someone despite their decisions I think we also need to be able to self-access. A lot of times we are fast to place the blame outside but in reality, we need to self-access and point out the hypocrisy in our own lives. The more we see and address our own hypocrisy the sooner we can be able to love others for theirs. 

Paul Hudak
Director of Operations

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