Love Your Enemies

"Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you." [Matthew 5:44]

I have had enemies in my life, even as a child. Other children who called me names, who picked on me for the shape of my nose, or the ethnicity of my last name, or the straight A's I got in school (as if it were an embarrassing thing to be smart.)

I have had adults who called me a failure, or who asked, Who would marry you? I have been mocked for wanting to give to charity, shunned for marrying a Christian, instructed to skip church and especially to avoid Communion.

How can I possibly love these people?

To me, loving one's enemies happens in a continuum, over time, just like our spiritual journey spins out over years and decades.

As children, we learn that, "Two wrongs don't make a right." In other words, we are told, do not live by "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." [Matthew 5: 38]. So, we come to see that if someone assaults us, it is not wise to do the same back.

Gradually we see that it is not in our self interest to hate our enemies. Have you ever seen anyone so angry over a past injustice, that they live their lives in spiteful discontent, hating everyone and everything? Hebrews 12:14-15 says, "Pursue peace with all people, lest any root of bitterness springing up should cause trouble." Hate is a bitter seed that can gradually but surely destroy us within. When we hate, we die inside, rather than choose a life of peace and joy.

At a young age, I concluded that I did not have the time or the energy to devote to hating others. I needed allies to help me get what I needed. I did not need more enemies. I needed the strength to survive. I did not need to eat myself away from within, with hate.

As we begin to grow up, we learn to live by The Golden Rule. "Do not hate your brother in your heart. Love your neighbor as yourself." [Leviticus 7-18]. We treat others the way we want to be treated.

And maybe, if we cannot forgive our enemies enough to be around them much, we can at least pray for them. I have been in a place where it has been too enormous for me to love or forgive my enemies but I have had a generous enough spirit to ask God to forgive them.

I reached a time when I realized that where people did not welcome me, I had to leave there and "go to another village". [Luke 9: 1-5] In other words, I found another family and different people who would love me.

All these self-defensive maneuvers about loving one's enemies? They start to sound like bargaining with God!

So, lately, I realize that deciding to love is not just about my self interest, about keeping the peace in order to preserve myself from harm. Nor is it about some sort of communal pact of  treating others well, in order to try to guarantee good treatment back. Neither is it about recusing myself from the process and pushing the job of forgiveness onto God. No, it has become about who I am as a person.

My elders have been growing old and sick. I could walk away from someone who had hurt me deeply, abandoning her at a time of dire need.  Or I could step up and become the loving person I wish I had had in my life when I was a child.

Over the years, I realized that some of the people who had hurt me so deeply had become old and frail and could not hurt me any longer. I realized that in walking away from the persons who had sinned against me, I was in danger of committing the same sins myself --  hating, not loving; judging, not forgiving; abandoning, not showing commitment.

Leviticus 19:17-18 says, "You may have to reprove your fellow citizen, but do not incur sin because of him." I never want to become the person I criticize for sinning against me!

My commitment was not just to the person I was meant to care for. It was a commmitment to my own integrity. It was my commitment to God.

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