Loving Enemies

Thoughts on loving our enemies

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Three Saturday Services in a row the group and I interacted around the topic of loving our enemies.

Here are some thoughts related to our discussion.

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The “Love your enemies” trope is famously attributed to Jesus — in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere.

> Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.

(Luke 6:27) 

>If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them.

(Luke 6:32)

>Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of God, because God is kind even to the ungrateful and wicked. 

(Luke 6:35)

And, just because you are or might be Jewish and these words are on “that” side of the bible, you are not exempt from the call to be loving even to our adversaries.

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The word *adversaries* seems to make it easier to understand than the word *enemies*.

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Reality can serve up large, heaping platefuls of adversity.

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We don’t hate our adversaries because we enjoy not being loving.

We enjoy not loving our adversaries because we, albeit some of us only secretly, enjoy the catharsis of reacting — the flush of anger.

> I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.

James Baldwin

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Ok, ok, you don’t need to like (or love) everyone, but you don’t need to be a dick, either.

You can set some healty boundaries instead.

> There’s nothing that harshness does that loving firmness doesn’t do better.

Terry Real

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I asked a group, “What would you do if every day this week you awoke with a greater portion  of love than you had the day before?” and very few suggested responding with “love those who oppose me.”

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> When we’re able to love our enemy, that person is no longer our enemy. The idea of “enemy” vanishes and is replaced by the person who is suffering and needs our compassion.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

> To love our enemy is impossible, because the moment we love him, he is no longer our enemy.

—Thich Nhat Hanh

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Don’t start with attempting to love your greatest enemy. In other words, don’t start with the person you hate most.

Start with someone who irks you and move up from there.

Can you be loving toward:

• the person who irks you
• the person who annoys you
• the person who bothers you
• the person who frustrates you
• the person who upsets you
• the person who disturbs you
• the person who offends you
• the person who angers you
• the person whom you despise
• the person you hate

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You know what might really help with loving even those who are “ick” or “adversaries”?

Wanting to.

And, practicing it.

(It’s up to you.)

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NOTE: You *never* have to love anyone you don’t want to.

> We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.

Robert Jones Jr.:

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Loving our adversaries doesn’t mean agreeing with them.

Loving our adversaries doesn’t mean that we have to choose between keeping them in our lives or removing them from our lives.

We can be friendly (and even friends) with adversaries.

(Well, not so much if you keep hating on them.)

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Maybe our ability/inabilty to love our adversaries is related to our ability/inability to love ourselves.

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When asked how we ought to love, former bishop John Shelby Spong replied, “Wastefully.”

Wastefully? 

This means we might “waste” some of our love on our adversaries. 

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Some methods that might help the world to have more love in general (and are, therefore, also good for loving our adversaries)

• Questioning our sense of urgency
• Maintaining curiosity
• Self-care
• Tolerance
• Forgiveness
• Modeling what love looks like

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Go and love.