Respect

    In sociology, which I used to teach, you need operational definitions. You need to be able to observe things, and even to put a number on what you are observing. If you want to study poverty, you have to have an operational definition of poverty, something you can measure.

    For years I looked for an operational definition of love. We really need that. How can men and women who call themselves followers of Jesus treat other men and women with disrespect and violence? They say, “Any talk about love is just romantic dreaming.”

    I finally found an operational definition of love. It has three or four terms, but I will just focus on one: respect. The first part of love is respect.

    Respect is observable. With a little work you could measure it.  

    Roy Webb, in his recently published book “How to Lead a School District through a Pandemic,” was describing how he did his job as superintendent of Quincy Public Schools. On page 140 he writes: “Respect is key. In the military we salute when we see others in the military out of respect. Respect is 360 degrees. You respect your boss, your peers, and your subordinates.”

    Dennis Williams, one of the founders of Bella Ease, used to tell young people not to use the N-word. When a white person uses the word addressing a black person, you have disrespect, and he did not want young people to use the word on anybody, white or black. Using it can make it easier to treat people with disrespect.  

    The F-word is a word of disrespect. The fact that it has become so common is a sign that we are getting used to treating each other disrespectfully.

    Without respect we cannot even begin to love.

    Every single human being, young, old, male, female, criminal or innocent, deserves respect, needs respect, because every single human being has dignity and needs love.

    Any form of violence is disrespectful. We cannot show love by intentionally hurting someone else. There are times when we have to cause pain—for example, when we have to struggle with someone dear to us over behavior that could destroy our relationship. But the pain is not the purpose. When you start out wanting to hurt, you diminish the dignity of the other person.

    We christians often hear the gospel admonition that we should love one another. We should love one another as Jesus loved us. Jesus never used violence against another person. Even when he was driving money changers out of the temple, he was not hitting the money changers.

    We can measure the extent to which we are a christian society by measuring the extent to which we treat every one of our neighbors with respect.

 [published in Muddy River News, January 18, 2026]