Midweek: Love of Enemies

The following segment on forgiveness and loving our enemies is from Jean Vanier's book, Becoming Human:

The love of one's enemy is at the heart of the Christian message. Jesus says forcefully, "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, speak well of those who speak badly of you, and pray for those who abuse you." (Luke 6:27-28)

Jesus' words were spoken in Galilee, near Lake Tiberias. For many centuries the Jewish peopla had been overrun by foreign powers: first by the Babylonians, then by the Persians, later by the Greeks, and then by the Romans. The Jewish people, naturally, hated this foreign domination. Crushed in their dignity and freedom, they sought liberation...

Sometime after the birth of Christ, a certain Judas Ezechias led a powerful revolt in Galilee that was crushed by the Romans. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian of the first century, tells us that in retaliation for the revolt, the Roaman crucified two thousand Galileans. And now Jesus is telling the Galileans to love their enemies! To pray for those who abuse and crush them! Imagine their anger! "No! I hate the Romans! I want to kill them!" you can hear them say. "They crucified my father, my brother, my son, my uncle...." When we read Jesus' words in such a context an invitation to love our enemies might seem idealistic or even sentimental. For the Galileans, Jesus' words could seem like provocation, the words of a coward, someone frightened of violence and confrontation. They might even think of Jesus as an agent of the Romans trying to dampen the true aspirations of the Jewish people for freedom.

But Jesus was...making a promise of transformation and inner liberation that, if it had been received, could have transformed the history of the world....

"Enemy" is a very strong word. It generally refers to those who are in a state of war. It can also be used to describe groups of individuals who oppress others, who shackle their freedom and prevent their growth. Because "enemy" is such a strong term, it's easy for us to deny that we have enemies. But...enemies...can be much simpler, much closer to home. An enemy is someone who stands in the way of our freedom, dignity, and capacity to grow and to love, someone whom we avoid or with whom we refuse to communicate....

In order to enter the path of forgiveness, we have to lose our feelings of both superiority and inferiority. Each of us has hurt another, each of us has been hurt. And so we must take responsibility for our lives as well as for the future....

To forgive means to believe that each of us can evolve and change, that human redemption is possible....

To forgive means to yearn for unity and peace. Unity is the ultimate treasure. It is the place where, in the garden of humanity, each one of us can grow, bear fruit, and give life.

Jesus' invitation to love one's enemies must have appeared dangerously utopian to the Galileans. Maybe it was only when they saw him standing up to the religious leaders of his day, pursuing a courageous and dangerous course for love, truth, and the liberation of the oppressed, that some began to understand that this was a new way to struggle for peace and to break the seemingly unending chain of human oppression, Loving our enemies means to see them as individuals who are perhaps caught up in a cycle of fear, and oppression, and in their character traits and need for power, but who are individuals nonetheless and are, beneath everything, sacred and precious. Their secret person is hidden behind walls of fear. To love them is to hope and yearn that instead of living a form of self-destruction, locked up in their own pride and power, they can be liberated.

~ Jean Vanier, Becoming Human