Today, I want to begin a new series in which we will explore some of Jesus’ teachings that we readily accept today, but that others might find scandalous, offensive, or even outrageous.
Most of us believe in being fair. If you treat me well, I will treat you well. If you help me, I will help you. If you lend me $100, I should pay it back. It is a sensible arrangement, and it works quite well until someone refuses to play by the rules.
Suppose a business partner cheats you, a friend betrays you, or someone deliberately harms a member of your family. Are you still expected to love that person? Surely, that person should first admit what he/she did, make it right, and maybe show that he/she can be trusted again. That seems only fair.
But Jesus apparently has a problem with our idea of fairness. In the Sermon on the Mount, He tells us to love our enemies. Not merely to tolerate them, or refrain from doing them harm, but to love them. And He makes no mention of an apology.
Matthew 5:43-48 (NLT)
“You have heard the law that says, ‘Love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you! In that way, you will be acting as true children of your Father in heaven. For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike. If you love only those who love you, what reward is there for that? Even corrupt tax collectors do that much. If you are kind only to your friends, how are you different from anyone else? Even pagans do that. But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.
Think of the people listening to Jesus. They lived under Roman power, and many had good reasons to resent those who collected taxes or enforced Roman rule. Tax collectors were widely disliked for their association with the ruling powers and their reputation for dishonesty. Jesus was speaking to people who knew what it meant to live with enemies. This was not simply a discussion about getting along with unpleasant neighbors.
There is something almost unreasonable about His command. We can agree that hatred is a miserable way to live. But love? What if the enemy is dangerous? What happens to justice if we offer love to people who have done nothing to deserve it?
Before we answer, notice something odd about Jesus’ opening statement. He says His listeners have heard, “Love your neighbor” and “Hate your enemy.” The command to love our neighbor is in Leviticus 19:18.
Leviticus 19:18: Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
Notice the command to hate our enemy is not there. In fact, Leviticus goes on to tell Israel to love the foreigner living among them.
Leviticus 19:33-34: Do not take advantage of foreigners who live among you in your land. Treat them like native-born Israelites, and love them as you love yourself. Remember that you were once foreigners living in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
Exodus 23:4-5 even says that if an enemy’s ox or donkey wanders away, we are to return it, and if the animal falls under its load, we are to help. Proverbs 25:21 tells us to feed a hungry enemy and give water to a thirsty one.
Imagine finding the donkey of a man who has cheated you. You might quite reasonably say, “That’s his problem. Why should I go out of my way to help him?” But God tells you to take the animal back. So, being kind to an enemy was not invented by Jesus. It’s not a new teaching. It was already in Scripture. What Jesus challenges is our habit of limiting the word neighbor to people we like, people who agree with us, people who belong to our group. We draw a line around those we love, and we put our enemies outside it. We can then praise ourselves on being loving people without having to love anyone particularly difficult.
Jesus tears up that arrangement. But His explanation is more surprising than the command. He says that God gives sunshine and rain to good people and bad people alike. What does the weather have to do with love?
Consider two farmers. One is honest, pays his workers fairly, and helps his neighbors. The other cheats his workers and takes advantage of people whenever he can. They both plant their fields. When it rains, both fields get wet. The dishonest farmer does not receive a bill from heaven demanding repentance before the next shower. The sun rises over his land just as it does over his neighbor’s. God knows the difference between the two farmers, but His generosity is not limited to the better man.
This is not how we would arrange things. We like a world in which good conduct brings reward and bad conduct brings punishment. Work hard, and you should prosper. Do wrong, and you should pay. It is the principle of cause and effect, and without it we could hardly run a household, much less a society. But we get into trouble when we assume that God must operate entirely by the same formula.
Job’s friends assumed exactly that. Job was suffering terribly, so they concluded he must have sinned. Why else would God allow all those disasters to fall on him? Their reasoning was perfectly logical. Unfortunately, the story tells us right from the beginning that Job was upright. His friends understood the rules of reward and punishment. What they did not understand was God. It is worth asking whether we make a similar mistake when we expect God to reserve His kindness for those who have earned it.
Jesus is not saying that God cannot tell good from evil. He calls, in the same sentence, some people righteous and others unrighteous. Also, just because God gives sunshine to the wicked does not mean He approves of their actions or will never hold them accountable. The point is that God does good even to people who do evil. His goodness begins with His own nature, not with an examination of our qualifications. In other words, God does not love us because we are good. He loves us because He is good. And Jesus says that His children should resemble Him.
But now we have a serious problem. Suppose a man steals money from his neighbor. Would loving him mean that he gets to keep it? Suppose someone abuses a child. What does love require of us then? If grace means that wickedness has no consequences, we have made the world safe for wicked people and unsafe for everyone else. Scripture does not permit that conclusion. The prophets condemn those who exploit the poor and injure the helpless. God cares about justice as well as mercy.
Paul seems to recognize the difficulty. In Romans 12:17-21, he tells us not to repay evil for evil or seek personal revenge. Instead, he says to feed a hungry enemy and give drink to a thirsty one. Then he tells us to overcome evil with good. Evil remains evil; the question is what we intend to do about it. In the next chapter, Paul even speaks of public authorities having a responsibility to deal with wrongdoing (Romans 13:1-4). Apparently, loving the offender and holding the offender accountable are not necessarily opposites.
Justice seeks to put things right and protect those who have been hurt. Revenge seeks the satisfaction of making someone else hurt. We may begin by asking for justice and discover that what we really want is revenge. There is a difference; still, it is not always pleasant to examine our motives. A dangerous person may need to be restrained, and someone who has been harmed may need distance and protection. Love does not require us to give an abuser another opportunity. But if we seek the wrongdoer’s ruin rather than the end of his wrongdoing, have we crossed from justice into vengeance?
Maybe this is why Jesus tells us to pray for our persecutors. Prayer forces an uncomfortable question. What exactly are we asking God to do to them? We may quite rightly ask that their violence stop, and their victims be protected. But could we also ask that they repent, change, and find the mercy of God? Or would we be disappointed if God forgave them?
Jonah was furious when God spared Nineveh. The people of that city were notorious for their wickedness, yet God showed them mercy when they repented. Jonah wanted God to be fair. God insisted on being gracious (Jonah 3-4).
That brings us to the last sentence of Jesus’ teaching, possibly the most demanding of all: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Most of us read that verse as an instruction to achieve faultless conduct. We begin checking our behavior, our thoughts, our prayers, our failures. How close are we to perfection? How much more work remains? It becomes a lifelong exercise in measuring ourselves, and the measurements are seldom encouraging.
But read the verse where Jesus put it. He has been talking about loving our enemies and about God’s goodness toward the righteous and unrighteous. The word therefore connects perfection with that discussion. In Luke’s account of a similar teaching, Jesus says to be merciful as our Father is merciful (Luke 6:36). Could it be that the perfection Jesus is speaking about here includes a love that reaches beyond the people we approve of? The passage does not make holiness unimportant. It makes our usual way of measuring holiness look rather inadequate.
We are remarkably good at measuring religion. We can count church attendance, prayers, offerings, hours of service, and commandments kept. Those things may be worthwhile. But a person may have an excellent religious record and still be unwilling to show kindness to someone who has hurt him. What good is our spiritual report card if we have missed the very thing Jesus is talking about? Perfection, in this passage, seems less concerned with being better than other people than with learning to treat them as our Father does.
We might reasonably object that this is asking too much. Surely we cannot manufacture love for someone who has caused us real suffering. Jesus does not make the command easier by setting the standard so high. In fact, His teaching seems to leave us with a choice between admitting that we fall far short and pretending that loving our enemies merely means being polite to people we dislike.
There is, but, one more passage we need to consider. So far, we have put ourselves in the position of the injured person. We have been discussing our enemies and wondering why they should receive our love. Paul turns the question around.
In Romans 5:8-10, he says that Christ died for us while we were still sinners, and that we were reconciled to God while we were His enemies.
His enemies? We don’t ordinarily think of ourselves that way. We may admit to being imperfect, or weak, or occasionally disobedient. But enemies of God seems a bit strong. Paul uses the word anyway. He is describing people estranged from God, people who have done nothing to earn reconciliation. And what did God do with those enemies? He loved them, at the cost of His Son.
Here, perhaps, is the real scandal. We have been asking why we should love people who do not deserve it, while depending every day on a God who loves people who do not deserve it. We take comfort in His patience with us. We rely upon forgiveness when we fail. Yet when His grace reaches someone who has wronged us, we suddenly become very interested in whether that person has earned it. We want God to judge our enemies by their actions and judge us by His mercy. It is a rather convenient arrangement, but hardly the one Jesus describes.
This does not remove the pain of what others have done or settle every question of justice. The person who has been injured may still struggle to pray for the one who caused the injury. And perhaps the struggle itself should make us cautious about telling others how quickly they ought to forgive. Jesus’ command remains a difficult one. But it is no longer simply an impossible standard placed upon us. It is a call to recognize, and to share, the kind of love that has already been offered to us.
We began by asking how anyone could be expected to love an enemy. Perhaps we have been asking the question from the wrong side. The question Jesus leaves us with is not only whether our enemies deserve our love, but whether we have understood the love of God at all.
If God treated His enemies the way we are inclined to treat ours, where would we be?
Discussion Questions
- Can we seek justice for someone who has hurt us without wanting revenge? How would we know the difference?
- Why do we find it reasonable for God to forgive us, but sometimes unreasonable for Him to forgive our enemies?
Donald: I was looking up the word enemy, because it’s not a word I use on a regular basis. I may not choose you as a friend, but that doesn’t mean you’re my enemy. Actually, one definition of enemy, according to a Google search, is simply someone who is not a friend. However, another definition is someone seeking to injure, overthrow, or confound an opponent. That’s quite different. That person is seeking to injure you, and I think that’s the meaning I consider when I hear the word enemy.
I don’t know about you, but do you have many enemies? You may have people you don’t consider friends, but I don’t know that you would describe them as enemies. Does your enemy have a face? Right now, we have conflicts going on around the world, and we talk about the enemy. That certainly describes a hostile situation and gives us an understanding of what the word might mean. My enemy is a danger to me. That’s an interesting distinction, and I think we have to somehow reconcile it with the idea of people we like and people we don’t like.
It seems that we sometimes regard liking one another as something negative, or at least exclusive. We like each other. Does that mean we don’t like the people who aren’t here this morning? No. But we, as a group, have learned to like each other because we explore ideas together. Does that mean anybody who isn’t part of this group is not our friend? I don’t think so.
Lastly, how do we reconcile the ideas of heaven and hell? Is that justice or revenge? When we think of hell, what ideas come to mind? It’s not just a matter of separation; it’s a matter of annihilation. Those are just some of the things I thought about as you were presenting your ideas so well, Kiran. Thank you.
Kiran: If you turn on the television now, all the political advertisements make you believe that half the population is your enemy. There is so much vitriol. The amount of mail we get in our mailbox, and the things the candidates say about one another, are extraordinary. There are attacks involving Muslims and other groups. Every election cycle, every two years, it’s the same thing.
Donald: Are they trying to make us enemies, or simply people who are not friends? They make the opposing group sound dangerous, and if someone is dangerous, that would make that person an enemy. But if you were given a sheet of paper and asked to write down the names of people you actually know who are your enemies, I would bet it wouldn’t be a very long list.
C-J: I think part of the way I identify a true enemy is that I have to add the word predator. These are people who are actively seeking to cause harm, disrupt my way of life, my belief system, my sense of physical safety, or my future. There has to be that element of intentionally being a predator, because if you’re going to be my enemy, you will seek to disrupt those things when I’m most vulnerable.
You can do it in many ways. You can do it legally, you can do it violently through war, or you can do it through retribution. But I really believe that an enemy is more than situational. There has to be a very distinct pattern of activity indicating that the more someone does something that causes harm, the more likely that person is to continue causing harm. That’s why we put people in jail. It’s not just retribution or containment. There is a reason for it. You have created a pattern of behavior and a way of being that is a danger to others. It can be political, it can be in the medical field, or it can be within a family. It has many faces, but I think the key word is predator.
David: I’ve often said in class that I equate the notion of God with the word goodness. To me, God means essentially pure goodness. As Kiran was talking about justice, it occurred to me to ask whether justice is part of goodness. Does justice have anything at all to do with goodness? I’m not so sure it does.
C-J: I think we equate grace and justice in a similar way. Grace says, “You don’t deserve it, but I’ll extend it.” But I’m not going to extend it if I know that this person, at my weakest moment, is going to come after me. I’ve experienced that many times in my neighborhood. As we’ve heard before, a leopard doesn’t change its spots. Why would I stand in the middle of the street wondering whether a car would hit me, rather than listening to someone who warned me to look out for that car? I am responsible for exercising common sense. I’m responsible for understanding proximity and for knowing the law. You can’t simply stand there and say you didn’t know. Common sense has to prevail.
I think God is the same way, and the laws of the universe are that way. The universe is disruptive, dynamic, and not always consistent. Sometimes we say, “I didn’t see that coming.” I think the universe is that way, and I think God is that way. He extends grace, and sometimes we say, “I didn’t deserve it.” That’s really beyond what I would conceive of or be able to do. At other times, karma comes around and bites you, and you say, “I knew when I did it that I shouldn’t have done it.”
I know you like to see goodness in everything, and other people do too, but I see a great deal of evil. A great deal of evil. It’s just unbelievable.
Donald: Your earlier comment, Connie, contained a component that I think is worthy of consideration, and that is the question of whether we have enemies at all. You can have people within a hospital whom you fear, because a hospital can be a pretty intense environment. But it’s an amazing place. You have a doctor, and the doctor doesn’t ask whether you’re an enemy or a friend. The doctor is there to treat you.
Now, if somebody comes in and disrupts that entire environment, that’s a different matter. But a hospital is a very earthly environment that tries, I think, to strip away the distinction between friend and enemy.
Don: David, I’m vaguely aware that, in a previous life many years ago, you were defrauded of a significant, life-changing opportunity by someone who was a trusted friend. I don’t know the details of that story, and I’m not sure whether you would be willing to share them. But if you would, it might provide a real-life example of something we’re talking about.
David: Sadly, it would be a real-life example of the badness in me, in that I took a long time to forgive what happened, when I should have forgiven much, much sooner. I basically lost $35 million. That was the value of my share in the company we’d started when it went public. But just before it went public, I was cheated out of my shares because of the way the legal documents I’d signed were written. They were able to get me out and then share my $35 million among themselves. That’s what happened.
In many ways, now, I’m glad I didn’t get it. I hate to think what I might have become if I had become a fairly rich person. I’m glad I didn’t. But this whole business of enemies and goodness brings me back to the idea that goodness itself cannot, by its nature, recognize an enemy.
Another relevant piece of Scripture is the instruction to turn the other cheek. If you are capable of doing that, you are not recognizing an enemy. The person slapping you on the cheek is not your enemy. You’re not looking upon that person as an enemy; you’re looking upon that person as a brother, or someone you love, someone who deserves your concern and your love.
It’s very, very hard to do, but that notion of being perfect is simply a matter of becoming goodness. We’re all good to some extent, which means, of course, that we’re all bad to some extent too. So judgment enters into this. “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” We make people our enemies because we judge them to be enemies, because their interests are inimical to our interests. Evil is certainly inimical to the interests of good, and yet goodness—God—doesn’t seem to mind.
To me, the reason might be that goodness recognizes that it is, ultimately, omnipotent. It cannot be defeated by evil. Ultimately, if it were, everything would cease to exist. There would be nothing here. And yet here we are, good and bad, but with just a little more goodness than evil. That’s what the world needs to survive, and that’s what Jesus is urging us to do. The more we strive to be perfect, the more likely we are to tip the balance toward more goodness than evil. And that keeps goodness alive.
C-J: What if that slap on the cheek, and turning the other cheek, is more of a surrender? Perhaps it’s simply not worth fighting for, and you survive for another day or another opportunity. I’ve walked away from things. Did that change the way I perceived the situation? No. It simply wasn’t worth the fight or what it could cost. Or perhaps I leave it in God’s hands and trust that God will take care of it.
David: I think that’s the issue. It’s a distinction between the worldly and the spiritual. “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.” On the one hand, we can resent worldly things, but there is a worldly aspect and there is a spiritual aspect. God can only be concerned, I think, with the spiritual aspect. Spiritually, we can certainly forgive, as Jesus was urging the Jews to do when he told them to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s.
Caesar had invaded Israel, taken it over, and subjected its people to Roman rule. That’s life. That’s the world we live in. But in terms of your spiritual life, it’s different. These are not your enemies. These are your fellow human beings. They are your brothers, children of God. But you have to separate the spiritual from the worldly.
C-J: I think there’s an accountability that we aren’t talking about here, in terms of what domain we’re operating in. When good men and women do nothing, and then something happens, they want the other person to be held accountable. But in fact, we each have power and authority over what we’re aware of. There are tools and levers we can use, at least to some extent. Some people have access to considerable power, authority, and money, but most of us live in our own little corner of the world, our own block, our own floor, or our own piece of property.
The truth is that if we don’t take responsibility for others, particularly those who are vulnerable, those who are uninformed, or those who are unable to anticipate danger, then we’re failing in our responsibilities. Think of children, the elderly, what children are being taught in schools, or what happens to elderly people behind closed doors. There may be beautifully painted rooms but poor food. If we don’t take responsibility, sometimes with a powerful, loud voice because something is so far out of bounds, then we’re allowing these things to continue.
I’m not going to turn the other cheek when it comes to women’s healthcare. I’m not going to turn the other cheek to predators who harm children. I’m not going to turn the other cheek to politicians who use their power, authority, and access to behave predatorily toward their own countrymen or toward people in other countries for the sake of free markets and profit. It’s wrong, just wrong. And that karma is going to rear its head, and when it does, there will be no mistake.
Sharon: I’ve been thinking about that very famous statement we’ve all heard many times: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” While that sounds wonderful, I’ve really tried, as an administrator, to operationalize it. What I’ve found is that if you bring your enemies closer, all of a sudden you have a deeper understanding of the complexities of who they are and why they might perceive that you are not their friend.
When I was president of the university, I chose some of my most vocal antagonists to serve on the university’s board, thinking that perhaps, by having them closer, I might be able to build a constructive relationship with them. I think there are two forces in the world, and we’re either part of the force for good or the force for evil. With what grace has done for me, I don’t know how I can fail to extend that grace to those who may not see eye to eye with me, or who are threatened by me and seem not to value who I am or what I am.
I think the challenge for me is to live out what grace has done for me with those people who seem to absolutely detest me or hate me for what I stand for, even though I pray not to be unkind to anybody or anything. Connie, I value what you’re saying about injustices that we cannot turn our heads away from. But when we begin to personalize those injustices by associating them with a particular person, I think we have to figure out how we can become part of the solution and part of the bridge-building, simply because of the nature of what God has done for us.
I think de-escalation and forgiveness are part of my responsibility. Even though someone in the room may be expressing things that don’t fit my own values, I need to try to understand where that person is coming from, and I need to affirm who that person is—not the ideology, necessarily, but the person as a child of God. If my own spirit is resonating with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, I can either escalate or de-escalate a situation.
When we look at Scripture, I think my job is to offer forgiveness and to try, in whatever Christ-centered way I can, to make my values clear without compromising them. But I must still understand that people’s backgrounds are complex, their experiences are complex, and they haven’t necessarily had the privileges I’ve had. With that understanding, how do I extend forgiveness and offer an olive branch? How can I be the balm in Gilead when the whole world is throwing out jabs, when we’re bullying one another and being mean-spirited and judgmental toward one another?
Justice, for me, is living out Christ’s grace in my own life and trying to share that grace with whoever comes into my sphere of influence, in a way that makes the world a little better, a little happier, and a little more inclusive. That includes diversity I may not share, celebrate, or even value.
It’s not an easy thing, and it’s something I pray about daily, because I want whatever I give out to the world, through Christ, to reflect a clean heart and a righteous spirit. That’s not always easy, and it does challenge us. But let’s keep our enemies closer and see what we can do through prayer, forgiveness, and love to help them understand that we really are brothers and sisters, and that we can be one in the Lord Jesus Christ.
C-J: I think you’re right. The problem is that we live with deception. People who have come from fractured families, fractured institutions, or a fractured sense of safety are more vulnerable to responding in terms of survival. As Christians, we may say what you’ve said: “I’m not worried about myself. I just want to be an ambassador and a witness, and I’m going to do this.”
I do believe you should know your enemy well, and I think it’s good in politics to have a voice that isn’t in agreement, someone who can say, “Have you considered this?” But I think our biggest issue, going all the way back to the metaphorical Garden, is how we develop discernment. How do we understand that the greatest enemy is deceit?
We believe the lie that something can’t be done, no matter how many ideas are on the table, because we believe that resistance, whether personal or global, will make it impossible to find a balance on that teeter-totter. But what you’re saying should be our ideal.
I’m not saying that we have only good people in churches, but I think it’s much easier to find community in a faith-based community that we’ve chosen or that we feel glad to belong to. Then, when we go out into the real world, I find that world to be a very inhospitable place.
Reinhard: When we look at the community and the people during Jesus’ time, I think the distinction between enemies and neighbors is not always clear, because some neighbors might have been considered enemies. The term enemy has a very broad meaning. It can refer to someone who threatens us physically, but it can also refer to people in different groups within a community.
We see that in the political environment today, where one group battles another group, or one candidate battles another candidate, an enemy. But there are also what I would call milder enemies, perhaps competitors or critics. People in positions of authority, like Sharon, may create an environment in which others don’t like their policies or the way they conduct business. That can create enemies. The higher someone’s position, the more likely it is that people will disagree with what that person wants to accomplish. Certainly, a president can create enemies.
But I think Jesus teaches his followers to aspire to a very high standard. He raises the bar. He brought a new concept, a new paradigm, to the community. Look at the Old Testament, with its teaching of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Even David prayed against his enemies, asking God to make their children fatherless. So I think the statement Jesus made represents a very high standard that Christians must strive toward.
We have to pursue that standard in order to live a life that will eventually lead to our names being written in the Book of Life. Remember the rich young ruler who asked Jesus, “What should I do to inherit eternal life?” That’s an issue for us as well. Eternal life is part of what Jesus is teaching us about.
God wants us to live according to his teachings. As I said earlier, even a neighbor may be considered a competitor or a mild enemy. That’s why the commandments to love your neighbor and love your enemy are so similar. In life, we have to put ourselves in the position Jesus taught us to aspire to.
We have different personalities, and we have to learn how to deal with people who hate us, disagree with us, or criticize what we do. The more people we’re exposed to, the more of these challenges we’ll encounter. But as Christians, following what Jesus taught, we have to pray for those people. We have to do these things in order to have peace of mind.
Sometimes, when we have a problem with someone, it keeps bothering us. It nags at us, and we lose our peace of mind. But the love Jesus teaches us is like putting out a fire that is troubling us psychologically or emotionally. When we put God’s word into our minds and hearts, and when we establish that foundation of loving our neighbors, I think everything in life will be all right. That’s what we have to do as Christians, by the grace of God. Then we can share that grace with other people, even our enemies.
Donald: The contrast between the Old Testament and the New Testament is interesting in relation to this conversation. The Old Testament is brutal. It’s just one story after another in which people are slaughtered. Some of us would prefer to remain in the New Testament and not consider the Old Testament as part of the entirety of Scripture. So where does the Old Testament fit into this? It’s brutal.
C-J: In the Old Testament, you also saw alliances developing among tribal communities. They weren’t just faith-based alliances. There were traveling markets and the practical realities of survival. If you were part of a Bedouin tribe traversing the desert, you couldn’t have too many people because you had to pick up everything—animals, children, the elderly—and move. So you formed alliances with like-minded people, often extended family members connected by marriage or blood.
I don’t think that’s changed. We know there are dangers when we leave our homes, whether physical, political, or economic. We try to be informed, and we try to form alliances. We might say to a neighbor, “If I lose my power, can I come over to your house? Because I know you have something I need, and at least I’ll be safe and warm.”
Alliances are built on personal experience, shared community, shared survival, and trust. Difficult times reinforce our ability to trust one another and remind us why trust is necessary. But when you’re entering a potentially hostile environment, you’d better do your homework. You’d better be prepared in case things go sideways. That preparation may involve your cognitive ability to be resilient, physical resources, or your proximity to other people. But you need to be aware.
You can’t simply believe that God is going to take care of everything for you. You have to show up, be prepared, know the language, and be able to plead your case. I believe that’s true even when we go before God. If I say, “God, I’m sorry,” but I don’t change my ways, that’s pretty hollow.
Maybe that’s the perspective on humanity that I bring to this discussion. I ask myself, “Where’s your skin in the game, Connie? What are you willing to do to change your spirit and your understanding of where you are?” I have that same expectation of other people, whether they’re family members, people I work with, or neighbors who own their property while I own mine. We have to find a way to make things work, and it has to be viable. It has to stand the test when things go wrong, so that we can come back and say, “I’ll take some ownership of this. I probably shouldn’t have said or done that. How can I make this right for you? What are going to be the rules of the game going forward?”
That really has to happen between us and God, between us and our neighbors, and in our spiritual lives. That’s what showing up and being accountable means to me. I agree with what Professor Pittman said, Sharon, that we have to be willing to take that risk and recognize its value. It changes our perspective.
I don’t know where another person has come from or what that person’s internal world looks like as a result of harm they may have suffered that I can’t see. But the harm is there, and it’s real. If we don’t have open communication that is visceral, authentic, and willing to take risks, we’re not going to move forward. Our ability to survive, to survive well, and to pass that legacy on will be diminished.
We have to come into these conversations fully engaged, saying, “I’m listening to you. Tell me what you need. Tell me what you want.” Until we do that, it’s not going to work.
Carolyn: I think we have such a broad spectrum of meaning in these two words: love and enemy.
Just how much difference is there between love and like? I can say, “I like that person,” or “I’m trying to love that person,” or “I want to love that person,” but are my enemies people I don’t like, or simply people who disagree with me? We’ve heard many different descriptions this morning of what enemies are to us.
I think it’s such a broad spectrum, and such a personal one, when you start bringing love into it. You have to know that it’s heartfelt. When you’re turning the other cheek, you’re allowing God to speak to you and allowing his words to be beneficial. I can say, “I forgive,” and “I love,” while deep down, in the pit of my stomach, I have to ask whether I really love that person.
Is this person really an enemy, or do I simply dislike the person? It can involve very small things. We’re talking about world affairs and big issues, but I’m thinking about day-to-day things, about people who get on your nerves. Sometimes it gets to the point where what I need to do is give it all to Jesus. He will direct my path, as Scripture tells us.
We have to learn to walk with him daily, every minute of the day. When we have questions, we have to give them to him and allow him to give us peace and joy, because he’s already given us his grace. He will show us the pathway of grace that we can extend to others.
Donald: Your point brings me back to what I said earlier. If we were given a sheet of paper and asked to write down the names of enemies who actually have faces, people we know personally rather than people we’ve seen at a distance or heard about from somebody else, how many enemies would we have? I think our lists would be rather short.
However, if you were given a sheet of paper and asked to write down the names of people you dislike, you might need a couple of sheets of paper. We’re not quite as good at that. I don’t know whether that’s a spectrum, but are we supposed to love people we dislike? Yes, I think so. That doesn’t mean I necessarily appreciate them. But why do I dislike them? That’s an interesting question. Is it because they don’t agree with me?
Kiran: That’s the question. Should we try not to dislike anybody? It’s difficult not to dislike some people, but even though we dislike them, can we still wish good things for them, just as we wish good things for ourselves? Can we get to that place where we wish good for people we dislike, even though we don’t want to spend time with them?
Sometimes it’s just exhausting to deal with certain people because they take all the energy out of you. I can’t deal with that, and I need my space. But that doesn’t mean I have to wish harm upon them. Is that possible?
Donald: Would you consider those people enemies?
Kiran: They’re not enemies.
Donald: You just dislike them.
Kiran: Yes. They’re somewhere on the spectrum. It’s interesting, because I’m thinking that if I asked a group of Indians in India whether they had enemies, I bet a lot of people would say yes. Maybe this country and this society are different.
In India, we have many divisions, including the caste system. Pakistan is considered an enemy, people of other faiths may be considered enemies, and someone may say, “That man stole something from me or from my grandfather, so he’s an enemy.” There are many people who don’t talk to one another, even though they live in very close quarters. These divisions are very common in India.
Here, you don’t see that as much. You let other people live the way they want to live, and you live the way you want to live. So perhaps we can dislike people for whatever reason, and maybe we want to stay away from them, but we don’t want to harm them. We hope that eventually they will have the peace we have, and that the kindness and love God gives us will be given to them as well.
Is that what Jesus is asking, or are we supposed to force ourselves to like everybody, whether we want to or not?
David: What I’ve heard from a number of you today is that this is something we apparently have to work at. That’s what many of you have suggested. We have to do this, we have to learn to walk with Jesus, and so on. There’s a lot of work and effort involved.
But Jesus has told us that there should be no effort, that we should let him carry the burden. I think we’re worrying too much about this. I believe Jesus would call himself a Daoist, because the Daoist idea of doing nothing, of not fighting, is very much like turning the other cheek. Don’t go against the flow; go with the flow rather than trying to fight against it.
When you say that you have to do things, you’re saying that you need to fight against something, that you need to be active and proactive. I think God is telling us he doesn’t need that kind of help. He’s perfectly capable of handling things, thank you very much. He just wants us to try to be perfect, to be good, and to love one another. It’s so beautifully simple.
I think it’s doable. Spiritually, at least. In worldly terms, it’s a little harder, as we’ve seen. But if we could achieve it spiritually, it would perhaps make what we do in the worldly sense a little better than we’re managing now. If the Jews listened to Leviticus today [in attempts to form a governing coalition, following the election], for example, a coalition with the Arab parties might help ensure a decent government in Israel.
So even the Old Testament had some pretty good parts. I hadn’t heard the passage from Leviticus that Kiran quoted, and that was a bit of an eye-opener.
I think we’re fighting too hard. We’re making this notion of being perfect into something that requires too much effort. We may be trying too hard, and we don’t need to. Through the grace of God, Jesus will take care of it. It’s his burden. He took it on, and thank God for that.
Don: I wonder whether there’s a problem with our definitions. Is there something between an enemy and a friend?
David: A frenemy.
Don: I’m wondering, for example, if you saw someone who was in danger, someone who was, quote-unquote, your enemy, and you could intervene in some way to remove that danger or help that person, I can’t imagine that most people wouldn’t do so. But that doesn’t mean the person is someone you would classify as a friend.
Donald: That was my point, Don. We’ve seen it time and time again, where a person is causing danger to large numbers of people and is then stopped, perhaps injured but not killed. You bring that person into a hospital, and you recognize that the person has nothing to do with the question of friendship or enmity in that setting. They’re somewhere in between. You take care of that person.
Don: Correct. That’s what gave me the thought, Donald. We do this all the time.
Kiran: But I think apathy is the main problem.
Don: Well, maybe that’s a good note on which to end our discussion this morning. We’ll pick it up next week.
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