Charity... and your neighbour

(I just liked using the King's English spelling of 'neighbour')

I Corinthians 13 is the famous 'charity' chapter. Now, I have never really looked into seeing if the King's English word for 'charity' is different in anyway than 'love,' as the word is more contemporarily translated, but I'm going to use it as being compatible. Webster's 1828 number 1 definition of 'charity' is: "In a general sense, love, benevolence, good will..." So, I'm comfortable with it.

Anyway, the next point of my thought today is like unto it... "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." I believe the Bible teaches that we should have I Corinthians 13 charity towards our neighbor in order to fulfill the second commandment (Matthew 22:39). All of the definitions of charity in I Corinthians 13 ought to be found in the way that we love our neighbor.

For example:

I Corinthians 13:5 says that charity "thinketh no evil." That means that we ought not to think evil of our neighbor. And, by the way, if you have a problem defining who your neighbor is, go ahead and read Luke 10. Jesus will help you out.

So, we are to not think evil of our neighbor. Sounds to me like we're not supposed to jump to conclusions about people. We are to always give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm afraid that I too quickly jump to a negative opinion about somebody, and just because they are lost, think that they are always out to do the worse thing possible... I'm not being charitable to them by thinking that way. I am not loving my neighbor when I do that.

Let's think no evil towards our neighbor.

Just a thought.