May 02, 2011
Love Your Enemies
Steve took an interesting direction commenting on the April 28th post, He Loves Them. For me, this is not a love vs. hate situation. It’s actually an acknowledgement that I have enemies. However, just because I have enemies, doesn’t necessarily mean that these people are God’s enemy. “For God so loved the world…” (John 3:16a) My enemy may be a family member or even a believing brother. I don’t want to hate them, I don’t want to love them…I just want them to go away and leave me alone. My current enemies have brought me to my knees and to Scripture…which both are getting well worn and callused.
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Gail;
-----Having enemies is more difficult than being an enemy, and being hated can be more destructive than hating. You are right, there are plenty of people who seek to injure, overthrow, or confound us and make themselves destructive and harmful to us both personally and categorically. They put us in the position of dealing with the mayhem they cause. But that is not the same as being put in the position of causing mayhem. Whether or not we have enemies and are hated, causing destruction and mayhem and being an enemy and hating remains for us a choice.
-----Choosing to be an enemy and to hate does have a proper place. Interesting enough, that place is embedded in love. Love seeks good and participation; hate seeks destruction and distance. Even those who make themselves enemies are loved according to the principle of Galatians 6:10, “Do good to all men...” The elements of our own relational alignments are towards being friends rather than being foes. It is the very nature of friendship which calls upon us to injure, overthrow, and confound the factors causing destruction and harm in a friend’s life. That is not to harm or destroy an enemy being treated as a friend, but to do him good. So any hatred directed towards an enemy has propriety in being directed towards what works towards his destruction because love is seeking what will work towards his good.
-----This brings to my mind the Spanish manner of spreading the gospel in the New World. Too often the new convert was immediately put to death lest he slide back into his old pagan understanding. Of course, eternal salvation is the ultimate good for a person, but the height of that good is no excuse for the depravity of such low behavior. The same shallow mindedness was the main display of the Inquisition’s torturing people into repentance. Such out of place participation smells of death and separation. Regardless of man’s grasping seemingly bright ideas as wisdom, wisdom itself must yet be mined with great effort, attentiveness, and inclination. For what is actually wise is as rare as gold, and foolishness can appear as similar to it as iron pyrite. Although we own our friendly regards for another person and can thus hate his destructive elements, we do not own that other person such as to actually destroy those elements. The propriety of our hatred is in convincing and inspiring him to destroy those elements at his own choosing. He is his own for giving to Christ and goodness.
-----So hating and being an enemy to the destructive characteristics of our enemies is embedded in loving them. It does us more good than destruction to do so. Since it is in our control to be such an enemy, it is much easier to be than being the target of someone else’s unwashed hatred and destructive ambitions. For we have neither a choice in being selected as a target nor in the arrow shot at us, regardless of how much we try to love them.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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