Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Do not waste your time bothering whether you love your neighbor act as if you did. As soon as we do this, we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less.”

Loving another person is not based on whether that person is deserving of love, but on God's command to me to love as God has loved me. Sometimes we withhold our love for selfish reason: to punish the other person or to show them how much they have hurt us. Who suffers? In the end, we do, because we separate ourselves from God more than from the other. When we withhold love we restrict our opening to God's love. We are telling God to treat us in the same way. Is that really what we want?