April 23, 2012
The Price is Right
Reflecting on the last four years on City Council I realize that along
with making a lot of new friends I’ve also made some enemies. No one
intentionally sets out to make enemies, but we believers should be reminding
one another that there is a price to pay even if you accidentally make an enemy.
“But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray
for those who persecute you…” (Matthew 5:44 NIV)
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Gail;
-----I don’t care how much we want to see people as good, or to think that we all interact rationally and maturely; they aren’t and we don’t. People liking things means people don’t like other things. To make friends, we are taught, requires a certain amount of mutual acceptance for liked things. And, whether or not we give much thought to it, we also engage our friends’ disliked things. So, whenever new friendships expand your repertoire of likes they expand also your repertoire of dislikes. Then, since there is always someone around who likes what you dislike, you will soon find a new enemy. It might even be one of your old friends! Therefore, the “friend making process” in which we engage also makes enemies on its flip side, actually or just potentially.
-----That process does not happen clearly in the concrete world of actions and activities. But it filters around actuality like a humidifying mist, keeping the process supple and alive. Much more apparent are the new friend’s enemies whom you get with the new friend. These are like accessories to a vacuum cleaner: you don’t really want them, but they come with the unit anyway. As much as is possible, we leave them attached to the unit as meaningless foreign objects. One more way gaining friends costs gaining enemies is less in the sense that the gained enemy comes by attachment to the gained friend and more in the sense that merely meeting new people costs meeting new enemies. This is probably more the sense you meant. But I spent all these words on your attention to underscore the fact that cost is a law. Everything costs.
-----So, is there a possibility that having the love of Christ might cost having both friends and enemies? We all know the Scriptures in which Christ’s love is defined as going out to everyone regardless of friend/enemy distinction. If we really wish to engage in Christ’s love then, does that mean the boundary which defines enemy from friend must go away? I think it does. I think it doesn’t. Enemy/friend is an actuality. People are not the same. Some dissimilarities are diametrically opposed. This doesn’t change. Christ’s love does not even make it go away. But ultimately, the cost of my love for Christ is all my friends. All my enemies, too. I have none left. That is because, as His friend, the new personality for me to share in is His, not theirs. I will like the things He likes regardless of what anyone else likes. All the other personalities around me become fungible goods not of mine. Oh certainly, I have an associative sharing in these fungible personalities, and some I share more in than others (e.g. my sweetie, sweetheart bride.) But what I am as a result of these associations is always subject to the constraints of the bonding I seek with Him.
-----Now the whole meaning of friend/enemy shifts from a sorting between what friendship supplies and enmity rends to what I supply friendship and enmity alike. Although that supply expresses into different things at different times around different people, all its expressions are of the same substance - love. Therefore, now having a new relational aspect for all people, the differentiation between enemy and friend goes away for its operation, but returns to meaningfully define an appropriate expression.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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