Yesterday, I read this little provocative post by Matthew Hosier. The essence of Matthew’s argument was this: you might not much like flag-waving, you may have all manner of thoughts about the arguments being advanced, but the key question is whether you like the people. Sometimes, Matthew argues, we just don’t like the people and that is what drives our particular position.

There can be no doubt he is right. It is undeniably true that biases often drive our positions. We may despise certain kinds of people and, as such, reckon certain totemic issues to speak to the kind of person they must be. There are plenty of examples of sneering on both sides of the aisle on not just this, but a multitude of issues.

The problem is that we often struggle to separate people from the ideas that they choose to promote. It is quite hard to insist that I deplore your racism but simultaneously quite like you as a person nonetheless. The two are linked at least a bit. The person saying the thing you deplore is surely a bit deplorable for having voiced it, aren’t they?

To take some (hopefully) extreme and yet painfully obvious examples, it would be quite hard to detach the words and actions of Fred West from the man. By all accounts, West could be quite charming in his own way. But it is virtually impossible to suggest that we really quite like him, we just aren’t keen on some of the things he did. Who he is and his likeability are pretty tightly linked. Without labouring the point, swap out Fred West for any other name you like that is now a by-word for the most heinous behaviour (Jimmy Saville, Ian Brady, Hitler, Stalin, etc, etc). Likeability is at least muted – if not made virtually impossible – by virtue of who they were, what they did and what they promoted.

So what do we do with much lesser things we find objectionable? Things that are clearly not on a par with Hitler or Stalin, Brady or Saville, but nevertheless we find deeply problematic? Can we any more detach these much lesser people from their problematic views and behaviours? Can we insist that we really do like these people even though we deeply object to much of what they say and do? Isn’t who we are, and how likeable we are, intricately related to what we think and do?

These things, of course, all sit on a spectrum. But the question isn’t about disagreeing over means or concerns over some tangential things. Our fundamental view of a person often stems from concerns over the very things that they say matter at all. For example, I can acknowledge that many Conservatives recognise the same problems I do and genuinely wish to do something about them. Our disagreements are often over the best means of reaching the same ends, addressing the same matters in different ways, not the fundamental question of whether the thing matters at all. It is not difficult to like a person who agrees on certain core issues but disagrees over the best means of achieving them.

But is it quite so easy to like someone who fundamentally disagrees over a very moral matter? Is it reasonable to expect a Jewish person to like someone who insists they think all Jews are part of a worldwide cabal, are responsible for all the world’s ills and the world would be a better place if that entire race of people were eradicated? Is it really credible to suggest that we extract the view from the person and determine to like the person nonetheless? By the same token, is it credible to expect a tax-paying, contributing, long-term resident non-UK citizen to like people who are actively, and often aggressively, insisting that such people ‘go home’ and that they do not want them here?

As a resident of one of those places of great deprivation, I do not always like the people who I show up to serve. I like some of them; I don’t like all of them. There isn’t a great deal inherent in a smelly, homeless, drug-addict who is evidently out to get whatever they can for their next hit that makes me think, I just really like that guy. There isn’t much about an awful lot of people we serve here who, in and of themselves, would lead many people to like them that much. I do dislike some of their views, I do dislike much of their behaviour, and I can’t reasonably separate that from the person. I like some of them; I don’t like quite a few of the others if I’m honest.

This is where I think the Bible shows us a better way. It, interestingly, doesn’t call us to like people. It doesn’t call us to affirm them. The Bible is quite happy to call a spade a spade, to call sin what it is to not affirm people as they do it. The bible seems quite happy at points to suggest a deep dislike of people’s behaviours and to not do anything much to distance itself from attaching that dislike to the person themselves.

What the bible does say, however, is that dislikable people nevertheless bear God’s image. It doesn’t really matter how much you like them; image bearers are worthy of dignity nonetheless. Moreover, it doesn’t call you to like them and everything about them; it calls you to love them. Loving them means getting beyond your discomfort and serving them regardless of how likeable they may be. Loving them might mean challenging their views (we don’t want a shallow view of love that affirms everything), but it also means we must serve them regardless. Whatever their views, they are made in God’s image and whatever their views – and however likeable they might be – there is no get-outs of loving your neighbour nor doing good even to those who despitefully use you. Jesus doesn’t say we have to like it, or like those who are doing the despiteful using and who set themselves as our enemies. But he does say even they are worthy of dignity and must be on the receiving end of our loving service of them.

Which brings me back to the article where we started. Those busy waving flags and promoting views we find objectionable might not be very likeable to us. I know it’s easy to cast aspersions about people you’ve never met when you don’t live in the places they come from, but I live in such a place and meet plenty of these people and I can’t say I like them any more up close than farther away. I don’t appreciate it when they attend asylum hotels my friends are placed in – hotels it bears remembering my friends do not want to be in and have no choice but being placed in – and stage frightening and aggressive demonstrations, throwing things at the windows and seeking to intimidate. I geneuinely don’t like it at all. I do find it objectionable and, dare I say, deplorable behaviour that emanates from deplorable views. I might very well understand some of the issues that drive (some of) the participants and have a great deal of sympathy for them in those things; and yet I still don’t like them, their behaviour nor their views.

But the question isn’t really whether I like them or not. The question is whether I love them and recognise – even in the face of these things – they nevertheless bear the image of God and must be treated with dignity. Like them or not, that is the biblical call. What is more, that is the biblical ground on which we not only love them, but demand – particularly in light of the so-called Christian values they wish to defend – that they so ought to love others and show them dignity, even the foreigner (or migrant) that they so evidently despise.