South Carolina police officer Leroy Smith, who is black, helps a white Klan supporter overcome by the heat at a July rally in support of the Confederacy in Columbia, S.C. (Photo by Rob Godfrey, a deputy chief of staff for S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThis sweet little commandment about \u201cthe donkey of one who hates you\u201d is a Mosaic precursor to Jesus\u2019 command to love our enemies. It also recalls Proverbs 25:21, which is quoted by the Apostle Paul in his Cliff Notes version\u00a0of the Sermon on the Mount in Romans 12: \u201cIf your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat;\u00a0and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink.\u201d<\/p>\n
The blunt practicality of this commandment about your enemy\u2019s donkey unpacks\u00a0some of what we sometimes miss in those other passages. First, here is a thing that will happen: You will have enemies. There will be people \u201cwho hate you\u201d \u2014 people who wish you harm and who think and act toward you or toward others with ill intent and bad motives.<\/p>\n
And here is a second thing that will happen: Sometimes bad things, misfortune, accidents and such, will happen to these people who hate you. They\u2019ll get hungry, they\u2019ll need water, their donkey will run away.<\/p>\n
And then here is a third thing that will happen: You\u2019ll be tempted not to help them. \u201cYou would hold back.\u201d That thought is going to occur to you, so let\u2019s not pretend otherwise. It\u2019s going to seem like the easiest thing in the world not to help somebody who would never, ever help you if your situations were reversed. But do it anyway.<\/p>\n
This all seems quite lovely so long as we nerf the meaning of \u201cenemy\u201d down to something petty and mostly harmless. That makes it all easier to deal with. We read \u201cenemy\u201d as just someone we sometimes disagree or argue with, maybe someone irritable, or just a player on the opposite team in some game.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s far more troubling, or even scandalous, when we let that word \u201cenemy\u201d carry its full weight. This is someone who means you harm and who uses whatever power they have to do you harm. This is someone who will never hesitate to exploit\u00a0an advantage in power to hurt you. This is, to use a great biblical word, an oppressor<\/em>. Oppressors are evil and unjust. They exploit their power over others. They are evil and unjust because<\/em> they exploit their power over others.<\/p>\nYet there will be times, Exodus 23:4-5 reminds us, that even oppressors\u00a0will be momentarily powerless. There will be times when you will have the power to help them\u00a0\u2014 or the power not to help\u00a0them. And you will have to choose whether to use your power the way they would, or to use your power the way you wish they would.<\/p>\n
That idea shows up all the time in our popular stories. The stalest clich\u00e9 version involves Our Hero catching the wrist of the villain dangling from the edge of some precipice. Moments before, that same villain had tried to push the hero off of that same precipice, but now their roles are reversed and the hero is desperately trying to save the villain\u2019s life. This is why Our Hero is a hero. This is, our stories say, the difference between good and evil.<\/p>\n
This scenario is complicated by the fact that should Our Hero succeed in rescuing the villain from plunging to their death, the villain will likely \u2014 being a villain \u2014 go right back to trying to kill the hero by pushing them off the very same precipice. Screenwriters usually deal with this complication by having the hero\u2019s genuine, good faith attempt to rescue the villain fail \u2014 sending them plunging to their death below. This neatly resolves the plot, but it also allows us, the audience, to have it both ways. We get to enjoy the catharsis of vengeance, watching the villain die because we \u201cwould hold back,\u201d while still reaffirming the goodness and rightness of the hero\u2019s attempt to save them. We get to celebrate the villain\u2019s death while still half-telling ourselves that we would have emulated the hero\u2019s heroism in trying to save them.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“When you come upon your enemy\u2019s ox or donkey going astray, you shall bring it back. When you see the donkey of one who hates you lying under its burden and you would hold back from setting it free, you must help to set it free.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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