Loving your enemies

But I say to you that are listening: Love your enemies, do good to those that hate you. Lk 6.27

It's difficult to love your enemies if you don't have any. Rather, if you don't think you have any. My suspicion is that we think of enemies as people "out there, far away", and so the application of Jesus' teaching seems remote, something for other times and places.

When Jesus was asked "And who is my neighbour?" (Luke 10:29) he responded with the similitude of the good Samaritan, prompting us to ask, "Who, rather, can I be a neighbour to?" I think the question of "who is my enemy?" needs a similar, though not quite the same, inversion.

So, let us ask first, "whom have I been an enemy to?" Or, to put it another way, are there people whom I have failed to love by acting for their good, both in fact and in intention? Are there people whom I have acted for their detriment, either in fact or in intention?

I put it this way because I think it helps us lower the bar from the thought, "Oh, I don't have any enemies". Those we love, we act for their good. When we fail to act for others' good, we in fact practice hate towards them, even if we don't feel any hate. And so we are their enemy in deed, even if we feel otherwise.

Chief among these, then, are those we have ourselves have wronged. To love these people that we have treated as enemies will mean repentance of our wrongdoing, restitution of damage where necessary and possible, prayer for their good, and acts for their good insofar as is possible. It is humbling and humiliating to begin with loving those we have been an enemy to. And yet I am not sure we can do otherwise.

It takes two for peace, but only one for enmity. So again, perhaps there are others whom I have not wronged, but I have not loved as I ought. I have dismissed them, neglected them, considered it not my obligation to be their neighbour or their friend, passed up opportunities to do them good, or never even thought that I should consider it. If I have not loved others as I ought, I have perhaps not actively harmed them, but I have nonetheless treated them more as enemy than as friend. Here my repentance will take more the confession of wrongful attitude and omission. And, again, I must commit myself to prayer, and to action.

Before we go on, let me pause on these two points. Firstly, true love of enemies must result in prayer, and must come from prayer. The greatest good I can desire for someone will come from God alone, and it him I must entreat. And in doing so, I stand before the Almighty and humbly request his blessing for them. I cannot do so except in a way that lays bare the secrets of my heart, and so any enmity that remains in me cannot remain long. Genuine prayer for others kills enmity in the heart.

I can always pray, but I cannot always act. Love for enemies ought to result in actions, insofar as it is possible. Are there things I can do for their good? I should do them, and I should pray. Are there no actions I can do for their good? I should pray.

Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash

Having first asked "whom have I been an enemy to?", secondly we may ask, "are there those who are enemies to me?" Not necessarily people that I think of as enemies, but people who through various motives and causes are sources of harm for me. It could be some personal conflict that is one-sided, or more one-sided than two-sided; it could be a professional rivalry; it could be that someone else is simply acting with indifference and neglect towards me. In these ways others may be failing to love me as they ought.

The point of calling such people "enemies" is not to engender bitterness and victimhood in ourselves, but rather to prompt our very selves to act in greater love towards them. And if we have begun by asking how we ourselves have acted in these ways to others, we first humble ourselves so that identifying such behaviour in others will by no means elevate us to despise them, but give us grace to know our condition is no better than theirs.

Here it is not repentance that we must practice, but forgiveness. I think that we think forgiveness is easier than repentance, but I'm not sure that is so true. Repentance involves coming face to face with our own wrongdoing, owning it, acknowledging it and confessing it, and doing so before God and before those we have wronged. Forgiveness means acknowledging someone else's wrongdoing, which is easy to do, and remitting their guilt and punishment which is far, far harder. It involves, in some sense, bearing the cost of that wrongdoing in ourselves, rather than seeking its extraction from the wrongdoer. Repentance is a desperate (in a good way) humiliation; forgiveness, a costly dying to one's self for the good of those who wronged us.

Finally, we may turn to those who truly are enemies in the fullest sense of the word: those seeking to do oppose us, or even moreso, to do harm and violence to us. I confess, I have no real experience of loving enemies at such a level. I have never been at war, never been targeted to individual or systemic harm, violence, wrong-doing, death-seeking. I have not individually experienced terror, shootings, violence, war, or the rest. So, all my wisdom is that learned from saints who have. It is the rich stories of those who chose love over hate in the face of death that inspire us here. And they have done so, because he did so. It is in the school of Christ that we learn the fullest expression and example of the one who loved his enemies even unto death, offering not defence, not vengeance, but his self-sacrificial death as the act that might ultimately redeem even his killers. This love, divine and unrelenting, overcomes evil. It is this love that loved us while yet enemies. It is this love that makes possible all these loves of ours, to love our enemies as Christ loved us.