Last week I wrote about why I believe in loving my enemies even if it is difficult and distasteful and uncomfortable and unpopular to do so. My main reasoning, of course, is that I believe in Jesus, and Jesus directly, explicitly, and repeatedly commanded his followers to love our enemies and pray for those who hate us. We can choose not to be Christian – not to believe in Jesus, and that’s fine. Not everyone needs to be Christian. If you are not persuaded that Jesus is Lord, then his words have no authority over you. And I say, in all sincerity, that you should be free to take and leave what he says as it fits you and your life.
But if I call myself Christian, which I do, then taking Jesus seriously, even when he is being difficult and frustrating, is central to the way I live my life. Jesus says love your enemies and pray for those who hate you. He’s not kidding. And he’s not being impossible. This is practical advice. Remember that Jesus is operating from the perspective that God’s love is the animating force of all creation, that love is not a benign thing, not just a feeling or emotion, but that love is in fact the underpinning reality of all that is. So, when Jesus commands us to love, he is essentially telling us to live into our reason for existing. Love is not an extracurricular activity, not an elective: It is core to our understanding of ourselves and of the people and world around us.
I know if you’ve been following along for the last couple weeks that I am repeating myself. I honestly do not believe it can be said enough: When we say God is love and we say that we are made for love, this is not fanciful idealism, it is an honest description of God’s identity and of ours. Love is your primary reason for existing, so it cannot just be symbolic, poetic, abstract, or idealistic. Jesus says that loving our enemies, praying for those who hate us, and loving people who are difficult to love is building our house on a solid foundation.
I initially wanted to write a blog on the practical aspects of loving your enemy when it comes to politics. Then in the writing it became two blogs. Now I’m realizing it will need to be 4-5 blogs just to scratch the surface. Loving our political enemies is complicated and multi-faceted. We will look at it in three different ways over the next few weeks: Loving the person in my life with whom I disagree, loving the politicians with whom I disagree, loving my enemy within the larger political system of which we are all a part. There are a bunch of things we will miss – as I said, this is just scratching the surface – but it’s worth it just to make sure we are having these conversations and are pushing ourselves to interact on a practical level with Jesus and his teachings.
As we decide whether or not to take Jesus seriously, it is worth noting that Jesus was not a person of privilege. I say this in part because I am a person of privilege, and in part because sometimes we forget about who Jesus really is and we categorize him as one as well.
I know that in our current climate even talking about having privilege is divisive. I know using that language will throw some people off, or make you shake your head and stick me in a specific category before I go any further. That’s ok. There is no way around it: My race, gender, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and income bracket all point to the fact that my life in the United States is more convenient than if any of those things were something else. I could get in a time machine and go to any point in this country’s history and my rights and stature would be roughly the same as what they are now. People like me are who the framers of our constitution had in mind when they founded this country – and our government and culture still reflect that reality. Privilege.
So, when I say we should love our enemies, one could easily respond, “Well that’s easy enough for you to say: What have you got to lose?” And that would be a fair point. I am not currently in danger of being deported because of my cultural background. I am not in a position where I could lose my job because of the color of my skin or sexual orientation. No one has ever told me that my gender doesn’t exist. Do I even have enemies? Or just people I don’t like? And if I do have enemies, what does loving them even cost me? Is loving my enemies risky at all for me?
Jesus was not like me. Jesus was a marginalized person living under an oppressive regime speaking to, teaching, and leading others who were also marginalized and oppressed. Sometimes I think with all the pictures of White Jesus in our churches, we are programmed to forget that Jesus was not part of the dominant culture of his time. Loving his enemies was costly to Jesus. Jesus chose to love and pray for people who had power over him, and who used that power for ill against him. Jesus spoke about love as if it gave him peace and power even as it put him at great risk. And yet, he was not speaking hypothetically. Love of enemies was not abstract philosophy for him – it was the lens through which he viewed the whole world.
This is how he saved us. This is how he saves us even now.
When I say love your enemies, it doesn’t have to mean anything to you. You don’t have to listen to me at all. It means something different coming from Jesus. Not just for you but for me. Because if loving his enemies was costly for Jesus, I need to be asking myself, am I willing for my love to be costly? Am I willing to have skin in the game and risk something of myself, of my safety and security, of my privilege and comfort, in order to love? So often, people who are as privileged as I am will say, “well loving your enemy sounds hard.” Yes. Ok. You can do hard things.
And this is not a time for us to fall back on the timeworn “Well, of course Jesus could do it, he was the Son of God,” excuse. No. That doesn’t work. Jesus didn’t stand up and say, “look at me loving my enemies! Aren’t I amazing! You could never do this!” Jesus specifically instructed those who followed him to make love the center of their lives in real and practical ways. He did not believe this would inoculate them from harm: Rather, he knew it would nourish and strengthen their souls, come what may.
In our current political landscape, hatred is tempting. Truly. People are doing hateful, harmful things. There are no number of calls for unity that can paper over the divisions between us. As I mentioned last week, I do not believe that enemy is too strong a term for what we are experiencing.
Jesus says to love and pray for those who hate and harm you not to make you a doormat. Jesus does not want you to lose your soul to hate. If you are not sure where to start, start there: Start with the understanding that Jesus is not telling you to excuse, ignore, or rationalize evil. Jesus is not telling you to acquiesce to the will of those who seek to harm you. Jesus is saying please do not get consumed by evil yourself. Do not let hate become the story of you. There is no such thing as hating your way into a more loving world.
And if you are like me, if you know and experience privilege in this world, I believe it is especially incumbent upon us to think about a way of love that pushes us to sacrifice, pushes us to risk something of ourselves, a love that costs us something. God expects us to use Jesus’ command not as a way to police the actions of others, but as a tool to guide our own personal decisions and actions. The command to love at all costs is not meant to be deferred, or to be applied to our lives only when it is convenient. The command to love is especially urgent for us. It is our salvation.
