Dear Fellow Trekker,
I have a confession. Candidly, a few of the things Jesus said, I would just as soon the writers of Scripture would not have recorded. I would have preferred some of the puns and jokes he surely told. After all, he invented humor!
And no statement fits this category quite like the Sermon on the Mount defining challenge: “Love your enemies…” Reading the Psalms, I am not caught up in how graciously another old soldier, David, loved his enemies. Had David been challenged to love his enemies, would he have grappled, too, with such a demand?
When ‘tough sayings’ are mediated in Scripture, I have come to some pretty rock solid convictions over the years:
- Be careful that you don’t respond to your ‘first blush’, but discover what is actually being said.
- Perhaps there is a deeper, more profound truth under the surface.
- Don’t theorize about applications of a statement beyond common sense.
- Experience in ‘working out the truth’ in life always seems to give perspective.
- After reaching an ‘accommodation’ with a tough saying, be cautious about pushing your experience on another. They may have to ‘live through it’ before they ‘get it’, too.
So this old soldier will share this month what I have wrestled with over the years, and the conclusions to which I have been led. First, Jesus is reacting to the conventional wisdom of his or any day – “love those who are easy to love and ‘hate’ those who are not.” He is positive – love everybody regardless! Be a lover, not a hater of people. Why? Because He (Jesus) so loved everybody, He was planning to die for them! In the Sermon on the Mount statement, we have a harbinger of His admonition later “to love as He loved”. No one is an enemy to God; people are simply alienated from Him, and left to themselves, do some dastardly things. Hence, we really hate heinous conduct, not people, if we get beneath the surface of words.
Jesus is saying, “See people as I see them. All are created in the image of my Father, just as in all the Divine image is flawed. Help me provide for their turn-a-round back to the Father. Be ready to forgive over and over and give them another chance.” At least, this is where I have ended up!
Since there are ‘flawed images’ everywhere, enemies are a fact of life. Our very dislike, distaste, yes, fear of ‘people conveyors’ of evil, force us to ‘deal with the problem’. Hate only enflames our passion and disgust. Love alone conquers our emotions and turns us toward placing legitimate strictures on evil, while being an element of hope for those so hopelessly ensnared by evil.
Interestingly, Jesus said not only to love your enemies, but, “to pray for those who persecute you”. Tough to do in every day and era, whether your enemies are Hitleresque or Bin Ladenesque, the deceased butcher of Baghdad or Al Qaeda. Enemies of the grossest imagination are ubiquitous across all of history’s pages, starting when Cain murdered his brother over a family matter. There is no hope for them apart from prayer. We do what is right, but our right actions, to love and pray, in no way guarantee a turn-a-bout by our enemies. They may hate us more. Seems true in our day, doesn’t it? True in the Lord’s day too! Those that Jesus loved hung him on a cross!
Yes, I do believe there is a deeper, more profound truth under the surface of this mandate to “love your enemies”. Soldiers who have lived this, as some of us have, know first hand that such a view makes good soldiers in combat and ‘of the cross’. Evil must be restrained, brought to cessation, and conduct ultimately judged for the good of an ordered society. A valuable soldier who knows true love can give a measured, appropriate response, overcoming enemies bent on power and control of the weak and lame. Such love and ‘professionalism’ of true soldiers prevents the My Lais or the alleged Hadithas of every age. As all true patriots and soldiers instinctively know, legitimate warfare is all about defense and restraint, not the essence of offense and aggression.
One practical caution crosses my mind… we are not called to love our enemies as we love our wife or our closest friend. We ‘fall in love’ with Jesus and our mate. It erupts from our heart. We neither can nor desire to contain this love. ‘Loving our Enemies’ is a conscious matter of our will, and one of controllable perspective. I can choose to love those whom are neither likeable nor like me. This God-like love has been known as ‘agape’ throughout the epochs of Christianity. With this love, in warfare or in my neighborhood, my response can be a ‘Jesus with skin on’ remedy, orchestrated not for vengeance, but for a cure.
Loving our enemies and praying for them touches us where we live, does it not? It is the sole, solid basis for all relationships, personal and corporate. I like this quote from William Barclay: “It is very much easier to go about declaring that there should be no such thing as war between nation and nation than to live a life in which we personally never allow any such thing as bitterness to invade our relationships with those we meet every day.”
Trekker, I believe with all my heart that with God’s help, we can truly ‘love our enemies’. I know we can pray for them! And if we do these things, we can be, in the Master’s words, “sons of your Father in heaven”. Tough sayings need not stiff us; they can open the door to true life.
Keep trekking, my brother… too soon to quit, no matter how tough the climb,
Jim Meredith
