Thanking God for our blessings is easy and we do not do that enough! Thanking God and blessing our enemies is much harder and so I begin my Thanksgiving season with those folk. Jesus said:
43“You have heard that it was said, ‘You must love your neighbor’ and hate your enemy. 44But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, 45so that you will become children of your Father in heaven, because he makes his sun rise on both evil and good people, and he lets rain fall on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Even the tax collectors do the same, don’t they? 47And if you greet only your relatives, that’s no great thing you’re doing, is it? Even the unbelievers do the same, don’t they? 48So be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
This saying is hard enough that we tend to leave “love” as a gaseous feeling of not-hating when it comes to our enemies. When I see bad people around the world, I studiously avoid hating them. This is not loving them, but it is good enough, I hope.
But it is not nearly good enough because loving is more than not hating. Hope (the fairest flower in all Christendom) would not be content if I got up and warmly did not hate her today. Hope hopes (this word play never grows old in our house) that I will love her actively. Jesus knows that when it comes to our enemies, as opposed to our family, that we will try to minimize what love is so he expands on His command.
He asks us to pray for those that persecute us. Jesus then points out that God allows natural blessings to fall on the just and the unjust. Thank God for that, because none of us is exactly just and in the complex interactions of all we do or say, nobody should hope for immediate, miraculous judgment when our choices are bad! We should ask God to bless the good they do, remembering almost no man is so vile that he does not do some good or no person loses the image of God.
Judgment eventually falls on injustice, but in any particular case where it would benefit me (on my personal enemies), I would do well not to root for it. Hatred and self-righteousness are easy sins to commit in the name of loving justice!
In another historical account that has Jesus speaking on loving our enemies, He says:
27 “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29 If someone slaps you on one cheek, turn to them the other also. If someone takes your coat, do not withhold your shirt from them. 30 Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
We are to do good to those who hate us and bless them where we can. If we are (personally) hit, then we turn the other cheek.* If even our enemies need something and we have it, then we should bless them when we can.
Acting in this way is Christian. Of course, this is not a law, but an attitude. Sometimes a man asks me for money, but I should not give it to him, because giving him drink money would not be loving. Still I do not turn away in disgust from him, but suggest places he can go and get help. I support groups that do help such men. If he asked for a coat, then I would give it to him with the same offer for deeper help.
This is a matter of the heart of mercy, love, and blessing controlling our action. Loving well is hard, even with our friends. Loving our enemies well is harder. We must always err on the side of doing as much good for them as we can on a personal level. We bless and do not curse. My job is not to save the world, but to pray for each soul I see.
We can disagree with our enemies. We can speak against them, as Jesus did with the Pharisees, but we must also offer our enemies gifts and help if they wish it. Jesus offered them His life. He talked with His enemies and made His time, the most precious time that the Earth ever wasted, available to them. He taught them daily. They returned His gift by killing Him and He forgave them from the Cross.
The day will come when God’s enemies will face the natural consequences of their choices, but only after millennia of patience, love, and blessing. Showers of blessing fall on the unjust and God hopes that will lead them to justice.
This Thanksgiving I will obey the commands of Jesus and lift up my enemies in my prayers and try to find ways to bless them.
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*This is compatible with justice. Nobody is saying one should “turn the other cheek” for someone else as bad people do when they cover up victimization. There is nothing more odious than the pastor who commands that someone else get hit as the pastor goes home to safety. In fact, the pastor should do justice, because he is not in the position of seeking personal revenge. He is called to prophetic witness.
Nobody is saying that the state should not “do justice.” Jesus is eliminating personal revenge or personal “causes.”
Nor is Jesus saying that a wife (for example) should stay with and so “love” an abusive husband and so continue abuse and his own damnation. The spirit of the words is that we let hate and bitterness go (as we can). We might separate ourselves from a compulsive abuser, but we need not let him have the power over us that hate gives him.
The attitude is one opposed to revenge and in favor justice with mercy as we hope God has mercy on us.
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