As we know, the devil quotes scripture for his own ends. Nowhere has he been busier in this regard over recent years than with the matter of love which is now used as an excuse to overlook all manner of assaults on goodness and truth. Don't judge, don't condemn, be tolerant, accept everyone and (pretty much) everything because, you know, love.
When Jesus told us to love our enemies he meant we should not hold hatred in our hearts for those who do us an ill turn. This is not to benefit our enemies who may or may not be good or bad people. It is to stop the hatred corroding our soul which is what hatred does do when it is personal. He was saying that hatred darkens the heart while love brings light to it. You cannot affect what is out there in others but you can affect what is in yourself. If you want to go to heaven then you must have heaven within you. We need to remember this. After death you will go to a place, an environment, that reflects your inner state. The subjective mind and the objective world reflect each other in the post-mortem state, the spiritual world. If you have hatred within you, you cannot go to place of love
This is why we are enjoined to take Christ into our hearts. Not merely believe in him, but actually build him into our being. This does start with belief but must progress to a form of identification. That does not mean you are Christ, that is blasphemy, but Christ is in you. Controversially for a Christian, this can work with other deity figures depending on how much spiritual light they carry, but none carries so much light, and pure light unmixed with other stuff as is the case with other deity figures, as Christ who is the image of God in human form to a greater degree than anything or anyone else. God has appeared in many images to humanity at various stages of its existence but only in Christ is he revealed as fully as is possible in this world.
So, love your enemies because love cleanses the soul and hatred makes it sick. But loving your enemies does not mean accepting evil, and if you use the excuse of love to ignore or, worse, justify evil then you are betraying love which, ultimately, is love of the Good.
Today in the name of love what is ugly is called beautiful, what is unnatural is called natural and what denies spirit is regarded as as healthy in its own way as what fully accepts it. If you really love then what you love first and foremost is God who is the author of love, and if you love God then you condemn what rejects or insults God. You don't let that condemnation affect you on a personal level because then it drags you down, but nor do you succumb to the dangerous illusion that universal, unconditional love means loving everything equally. There is good and there is evil. To love your enemy does not mean accepting evil which must be identified and unsentimentally condemned.
