Sunday, July 11, 2010

Love Your Enemies

"But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." -- Luke 6:35-36

This is a hard one, don't you think? It sounds good. It is good. I mean, it's in the Bible. But what exactly does loving your enemies mean? Forgiving them, for sure. Also, doing good things for them, again and again, even when they do bad things to you. It kind of goes against our human nature.

I can handle the outright enemies. Those you easily identify. It's easy to keep your guard up because they don't even try to hide the zingers headed your way. You smile anyway. You fake it when you must. You pray a lot and remind yourself that doing good for your enemies is what God wants. Revenge is His. You repeat this many, many times during and after each encounter.

The other type of enemies aren't so easy to deal with. They are the ones that kiss-kiss and pretend to be your friend. They just love you, so they claim. Their attacks come from out of nowhere, hitting straight for the heart every time. They are people in your family, people in your workplace, people in your church. Maybe, once, they were even friends.

It's so easy to be lured into letting your guard down. They seem so nice. They know you well enough to know exactly what to say and when to say it. You want to believe they've changed. You want to let them back into your heart. You want to love and care for them.

What they can't get past is their own jealousy and greed. They don't want you to succeed. They don't want you to be happy. They don't want to share the spotlight or the affections of those around you both. And the only way they know to cope is to destroy you anyway they can. Those are the people that hurt you again and again even as you forgive them again and again.

Now I'm not advocating letting people abuse you. You have to stand up for yourself and remove violent and verbally abusive people from your presence. God doesn't expect anyone to live that way. I believe that with all my heart.

But I also know that the old saying about killing them with kindness does apply. Your enemies don't know what to do with you when you're nice to them despite their best efforts to destroy you. So be kind. Be nice. Love your enemies. Who knows? Maybe by walking a path the Bible lays out, you'll show someone what it's really like to love Christ.