Love your enemies

Recently I’ve been getting a slew of junk emails. I guess my email address got sold to some list. All the emails have the same format. The subject lines all contain some kind of attention getting garbage and all have a reference to either gold, Elon, or Trump. Then there are link to “stories” about how you can get rich or ride the wave to wealth or some other such nonsense.

I go through, click on unsubscribe, block the email, and send to junk. And it seems as though most of what I just did is a waste of time because no sooner do I do that, then I get the next junk email with the same type of subject line and “content.” Of course, I get more because there’s the ever so slight variation on the sender’s email. It’s really frustrating that I have to devote time to unsubscribing and blocking emails over and over again, only to continue to receive them. I’d really like to send them a reply threatening to sue them or that I’ll hunt them down and do terrible things to them, but I don’t. And the reality is I wouldn’t cause violence on someone else. It doesn’t solve problems. It just creates more. But let me tell, that type of an email response would feel good. And I also know it would be a complete waste of time. It’s highly likely that no human would actually receive my snarky email response. Overall, it just feels like a no-win situation in which these emails will continue to come to my inbox forever more.

Are these senders my enemies? I don’t know. Enemies are those who don’t have your best interest at heart, to say the least. Often they seek out your detriment. They look for ways to take from you, without offering anything of value in return.

Who are my enemies? Good question. Enemies are those that have intention to hurt or diminish those that I care about, be they family, friends, church folks, and others I have some kind of meaningful relationship with. Or at least those that I perceive are a threat or have intention to harm the ones I care about. Enemies no longer (or maybe never had the capacity to) see the humanity of another person. How else would you be able to cause harm to someone else. And harm has a wide range. It can be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual in nature. It can also be financial, career, social, and more.

I’m not going to name who my enemies are here. It’s not really anyone else’s business. The point here is that if you are human, you have enemies. Even the most well liked human in history had enemies. No one escapes this reality. Have you thought about your enemies and how you are to treat them?

I’ve been thinking about this and struggling with it for a bit of time. So much is going one right now. And it seems as though many people are just reacting to events without taking time to think through how to respond. I’m not saying people are bad because of this. I think given all that is going on, it is overwhelming and so of course reaction is the most common thing people will do. We have to intentionally stop, take time for reflection and contemplation, to come up with an intentional response.

And I think this relates to the idea of loving our enemies. It takes a lot of will power to love your enemies. It’s a choice. And not an easy one. Often even thinking of a concrete specific way to love your enemies can be exhausting. And it’s one thing to talk about loving your enemies in the abstract and quite another to think about specific ways to love your enemies. Loving your enemy is an act of faith. It’s an act of grace. Grace is undeserved. And with loving your enemies, you aren’t going to get a reciprocal response. Although sometimes you might. But that’s not why you love your enemy anyway. You do it because it’s who you are. You don’t treat your enemies the same way they treat you or else you become the very person that you despise.

So how do you love your enemy? I think it starts with seeing and hearing the person. I don’t mean just the literal acts of seeing and hearing. I’m talking about going deeper. What’s their fear? What’s the motivation for what they are doing? How do they see me? Am I threat to them in some way, or even a perceived threat? If so, how? Did I do something that gave that perception? Is it something that is outside of my control, like ethnic group, language, sexuality, race, etc.? What is it about that is causing this person to act as they are? What kind of information are they getting and from where? What does this person gain, or think they gain, from their actions? Would I act the same way towards me if I had the same information they have? That’s just a sampling of questions – you might have more. The point is to dive deeper than the superficial. To see the person and to hear them. To humanize them. To try to understand their story of what brought them to this point. That’s not easy. We often don’t want to humanize our enemies. Because when we do that, they start to shift from being an enemy to something else.

Once we do that, we have to see how we are similar. That’s not just nice talk. How am I like this person? What are things we have in common. At the very least, we are both human. Although that might be difficult for us to see if the acts being done are horrible. But again, how am I like this person? How can I see myself in them? How can I see them in me? That’s not a pleasant thought process. But it’s necessary. We so desperately want to be so very different from our enemies. We want to be able to label them and scapegoat them. We want to “other” them. But how are like them, is a question that changes our perception of our enemies. This isn’t about excusing what someone is doing. It’s not about looking for a reciprocal response or that they will start to like us or anything like that. This about who we are and how we act. It’s about how we treat someone else – especially someone considered an enemy, or someone we hate.

Once we have done this hard work of seeing and hearing the person, and discerning how we are alike, then we can ask the question – how can I act in a loving way towards this person? I have to see their humanity. I have to see the image of God in them. I have to offer the very things that have been offered to me. Not because I want to. But because it’s who I am and what I claim to believe. I may not receive a positive response. My enemy isn’t going to trust me, that’s why we are enemies. But I have to act in such a way that is consistent with who I am and what I claim to believe. Congruency is the key. Congruency builds trust. Congruency plants a seed. Congruency allows you to be consistent and affirms what you claim and say. It is the embodiment of your true beliefs.

Loving ones’ enemies is a struggle. It’s not easy. And some days it feels more difficult than others. Some days you just have to put that aside because you don’t have the capacity to do it. And it’s in those days that you also might recognize that the other person doesn’t have the capacity either for any number of reasons.

Sometimes the most loving thing you can do after you’ve seen and heard someone is to be apart from them. Sometimes it is to seek reconciliation. Sometimes it’s to live in a detente. Sometimes it’s other ways. Each person is going to be different.

And sometimes our worst enemy is our selves. And we have to go through the same process. But we don’t get to walk away from ourselves. We have to make peace with ourselves. And that’s not easy either.