Love your enemies (Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6: 27-35)
(Rule of Saint Benedict 4. 31)
Loving your enemies sounds like a nice idea until you actually have enemies yourself.
When someone asked Jesus, “who is my neighbor?” he responded with the parable of the Good Samaritan, which turns the question on its head. We are to be neighbors even to inveterate cultural enemies. But no one ever asked Jesus, “who is my enemy?” This, it seems, we are left to figure out.
An enemy is not merely someone with whom you disagree. You can disagree passionately with friends on all sorts of topics, as long as you have something more important in common.
Nor is an enemy an opponent in a game. An opponent recognizes the same boundaries you do and does not harm you in real life.
An enemy is not even necessarily someone with whom you are in conflict. Sometimes the angry person turns out not to be a beast. If you give the benefit of the doubt, engage, and communicate what’s going on from your perspective, sometimes you find that the enemy is a neighbor after all.
An enemy, in brief, is someone who acts deliberately on the intent to harm you. After you’ve attempted to resolve a conflict peacefully, the person who stabs you in the back can fairly be called an enemy.
And this is the person we’re called to love.
A Christian concept of love is essentially voluntary. We know that God is love. But we also know that God is not our slave. So, neither are we enslaved to those we love. Love ends where coercion begins.
Therefore, if you are going to love anyone, first you must be free. More to the point: you must be free from the enemy in question. If your enemy is more powerful than you are, escape is the first order of business. Extricate yourself, and then work on making new friends, because even evil people tend to avoid attacking someone who has relationships with others.
If you are, then, free to love, the question becomes, what is love?
We know that “the Lord disciplines those he loves” (Hebrews 12:6; Proverbs 3: 12). Therefore a Christian concept of love includes setting boundaries and enforcing standards. Love sets aside the self-interest of the moment for the good of the other person. But the good of the other person is not always what that person demands. When someone wants something that is not good, you say no, for love’s sake.
The most terrible enemies are the ones you always loved, and who, you thought, also loved you. Those are the ones who break your heart. There’s nothing quite like the distress of loving the antagonist who once was dear. The world roils with enemies who are exes.
Whether the situation is tragic or merely wearisome, loving any sort of enemy requires a combination of efforts. First, you must finesse your way out of range of whatever harm your enemy might inflict. Further, you must refrain from inflicting whatever revenge is within reach. Ultimately, you must make the extra effort to be the sort of person your enemy is not.
Your enemy is enraged, but you must be respectful. Your enemy is vindictive, but you must be peacable. Your enemy is selfish, but you must be generous. Your enemy is false, but you must be true.
Nothing anyone can say will ever make this easy, but the Holy Spirit can make it possible.
