I don't suppose there is much doubt that this is the hardest spiritual instruction to obey in a completely honest way. I personally don't see myself as having any actual enemies but there have been people in my life I find antipathetic and don't get on with, and one particular person who has caused me no end of problems. And if you extend this group to individuals with a public profile who you profoundly disagree with and who you think are responsible for creating a world in which the spiritual is denied or travestied, the list becomes quite long. Can a Jew love Hitler? I'm sure some heroic souls have made the effort not to hate because, as we all know, hate stains the soul of the hater, but actually love? That is asking a lot.
And yet it is what Jesus asks us to do. The actual passage in the Sermon on the Mount says, "Love your enemies and pray for those that persecute you." Without using it as a get out of jail free card, i.e. an excuse to ignore the instruction to love your enemies, I think the second part does qualify the first somewhat and bring it to within slightly easier reach. Are you expected to love your enemy as you love your friend? That would be silly and demean your friend. It would make real friendship meaningless. However, Jesus goes on to point out that God makes the sun rise for everyone, good and bad, and that says to me that he is fair and without prejudice. Might that be a start for us in obeying this injunction? If there are those we dislike for one reason or another, even those who have harmed us, we should attempt to view them as God views them. Not by being blind to their faults but by seeing them as redeemable as we would hope God would see us when we behave badly. Giving them every chance to improve rather than damning them, and enabling them to do that by not acting towards them as we feel they are acting towards us. If we do, how are we different or any better than them which presumably we assume ourselves to be?
The Masters told me that if you look for the good in people, you will help to bring that out. If you focus on the bad, you will bring that out. This does not require being naive and Pollyanna-ish. Then you will probably just enable wrongdoing and that is not what love your enemy means. But it does mean forgiving and quashing all negativity within you. After all, can a truly loving person ever hate? Isn't it a contradiction in terms? If you do hate there is darkness in your soul. Only love brings light so perhaps when Jesus told us to love our enemies, he was not thinking of the benefit that would accrue to the enemies so much as the benefit that would accrue to us.
The Christian life is about sacrifice which is one of the things that marks it out from other spiritual approaches. For a normal person, certainly for me, loving your enemies is a sacrifice. It's not just swimming against the emotional tide; it is also a blow to pride. If you love your enemy you are, or can seem to be in the eyes of the ego, somewhat humiliating yourself. In a way (again, for the ego) your enemy has beaten you. But this is what Jesus asks, for us to accept the defeat of the ego with a good grace and turn that defeat to spiritual victory.
I have a close association with a person whom I regard as not a good person. This person is constantly abusive to me and full of anger and hate. I wondered why fate brought me together with such a person and came to the conclusion that it is actually for my spiritual benefit. It is precisely so that I may learn 'to love my enemy and pray for those that persecute me', something I clearly needed to learn. It is the egotism in me that has made it necessary for me to experience this.
One final point. Love your enemy relates to personal relationships and means we should never hate persons. But this a world of good and evil and the injunction in no wise applies to principles. Love your enemy does not mean giving evil the same respect as good nor untruth the same honour as truth.
Timely post! Hatred seems to poison humanity's collective spiritual water supply, the spiritual Earth, so to speak. It's been noticeable lately that modern progressivism is devolving fast into sadistic scapegoating and psychological torture. Without a transcendent standard, people just end up looking for plausible excuses to punish random strangers - using human beings like punching bags and voodoo dolls for their frustrations in life.
ReplyDeleteOnly Jesus said something that would fight back against this. What secular ideology preaches kindness toward its enemies?
Secular ideologies steal some things from Jesus but ignore the real fundamentals of his teaching.
ReplyDelete@William - By its absence from the Fourth Gospel (and other aspects) I am skepical that Love Your Enemy is a genuine part of Jesus's core teaching - except if 'love' is meant in the sense that we ought not-to-resent (ie. we should forgive) everybody, including enemies. Which is true - for our own good (resentment is a sin, and self-destructive).
ReplyDeleteIf we expand familial love to include attitudes to our enemies, and if we then assert that we should love our enemies in the Same Way a child might (ideally) love his Mother; then it begins a process of levelling-down, diluting and 'bureaucratizing' love, that leads to leftism.
I don't think Christianity can both have love as its core principle and also have us supposed to love everybody - without introducing distinctions in meaning and intensity - indeed qualitative differences in love.
On the contrary, I regard love as the principle of God and creation; and the characteristic of evil is the absence of love. If we insist on Christians loving evil persons/ spirits; we lose the mutuality and reciprocity that ought to characterise love - at least in Heaven.
Of course we may (as it were spontaneously) love someone who hates us and is our enemy (works against us). I think the purpose of such love is that it encourages repentance; if/ when that person may choose to cease to be our enemy. This may occur after death. So unilateral love may not be wasted, in the end.
But love is meant to be the glue of creation, and the necessary and sufficient condition of Heaven. Such love cannot be given to *everybody* as a matter of principle; I think it grows outwards - as it did from Jesus to/with the disciples, to/with other early Christians.
BTW - Pollyanna has an undeservedly bad reputation! I just finished reading the original novel by Eleanor H Porter; and found it a charming, funny and moving story; not as good as the brilliant Little Lord Fauntleroy (which it somewhat emulates), but certainly Pollyanna deserves its classic status.
Pollyanna has considerable self-awareness about her 'glad game' of always looking for the best in any situation; and she is plausibly depicted as having a salutary effect upon all the people around her.
It's important to keep in mind that Jesus never said, "Don't have enemies."
ReplyDeleteBruce, thanks for your comments which sheds extra light on the post.
ReplyDeleteI pretty much agree with you which is why I stressed the 'pray for those that persecute you' follow up line. Because it's one thing not to return hate with hate and to look for the best in someone but quite another actually to love a bad person. I interpret love in the love your enemy sense as not hate or wish harm to. So basically forgive and not hold any grudges. That's also why I said it would be silly to love your enemy as you love your friend. It would actually make a mockery of love and insult your friend. I wouldn't want to be friends with someone like that! And I absolutely agree about qualitative differences in love. If love is equal it just isn't love.
I don't know what the original word was in Greek but I would be prepared to take a bet that Jesus meant something a little different to the modern conception of love when he spoke here.
My apologies to Pollyanna! I haven't read the book and obviously used her name inappropriately albeit conventionally.
Wm Jas, yes I thought that too. Jesus had enemies up to and including the devil.This is a world of good and evil and it's naive sentimentality to think otherwise.
Love them all you want but remember to smite them as well!
ReplyDeleteOr bring a whip to kick money changers out of the Temple, as Jesus did.... or tell a non-Jew that they are like dogs compared to Jews, as Jesus said... or tell followers to sell their cloaks and buy swords... or say you come not to bring unity but to divide families.... or you must hate your own life to have it...
“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters— yes, even his own life— he cannot be My disciple."
Luke 14:26
Word.
@William
ReplyDeleteChrist's teaching to "love your enemy" is important because it is the first instance of a true "Golden Rule".
Often non-Christians say the "Golden Rule" existed long before Christianity, but invariably the examples they point to are "Silver" Rules based on reciprocation. Silver, because they call to mind the lunar reciprocity of the Sun's light.
"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is a reciprocal, "lunar" formulation. Other "lunar" formulae include "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth". Consideration of these formulae can help shed light on the evolution from OT --> NT and the transition from reciprocality("lunar") to unipolar ("solar") action.
The following from Luke 6 is a clear call to move beyond any remaining vestiges of reciprocity.
"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' love those who love them. And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' do that. And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even 'sinners' lend to 'sinners,' expecting to be repaid in full."