Christian Living: What To Do When People Don't Like You

We're living in a time where love is shown through flourishing relationships, marriages, babies, successful "inner" circles, likes, retweets and large social media followings. Granted, the latter half of what I just mentioned could hardy be defined as love but this is what the culture has come to. 

I won't go into how to know when someone doesn't like you. If you've found this post, your intuition has probably given you a couple hints. Here are my two suggestions on how to move forward with the newly acquired information. 

1. Believe it. 

Maya Angelou so popularly stated that when someone shows you who they are, believe them. With all conceit aside, we know how awesome and amazing we are. It's hard to fathom someone who wouldn't want to like us or be our friend. I hate to break it to you. Not everyone will like you and some people will find pleasure in disliking you. The worst thing to do is be in denial about it. This has happened to me with people I was very very close to. I couldn't understand it and didn't want to believe what was staring me in the face. When someone doesn't like you, make sure you comprehend it and believe it because it is the truth. 

2. Dismiss it. 

Don't take time to internalize why a person can't love you, like you or be kind to you. It is what it is. Live in the truth and move on. Still continue to be genuinely kind. Never allow anyone to have so much power of you by hating them.  Now, it's easy to spend time dissecting why a person doesn't like you or what you can do to make a person like you. You shouldn't need to start a sales campaign for friendship. It just doesn't take all of that. God can place people in your life who love, support, and encourage you to be the best you can possibly be. People who don't like you will never be completely truthful as to what you can do to be better because they don't want to see you become better. 

I hope this encourages and inspires you to lay aside EVERY weight that can easily weigh you down including people who have ill will toward you. People didn't like Christ and He was perfect so don't be surprised when people don't like you with all your imperfections. God's love is perfect and fully capable to cover you. 

-dani