Insights On Loving Your Enemies

Part 2 of Insights on Turning the Other Cheek, Enemy Love, and Judging Others

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(Read this series from its beginning here.)

In Luke 6, Jesus also speaks of an ethic closely associated with his teachings on nonviolence: the ethic of enemy love. It’s just as easily misinterpreted.

Loving our enemies does not mean we passively accept the harm they are doing. On the contrary, it means that while we obstruct their death-dealing choices and actions, we take care not to let go of our enemies’ humanity as we obstruct or stop them.

Pam McAllister expressed the tension well as she explain the teachings of Barbara Deming:

“Barbara wrote about the two hands of nonviolence . . . With one hand we say to one who is angry, or to an oppressor, or to an unjust system, ‘Stop what you are doing. I refuse to honor the role you are choosing to play. I refuse to obey you. I refuse to cooperate with your demands. I refuse to build the walls and the bombs. I refuse to pay for the guns. With this hand I will even interfere with the wrong you are doing. I want to disrupt the easy pattern of your life.’ But then the advocate of nonviolence raises the other hand. It is raised out-stretched—maybe with love and sympathy, maybe not—but always outstretched. With this hand we say, ‘I won’t let go of you or cast you out of the human race. I have faith that you can make a better choice than you are making now, and I’ll be here when you are ready. Like it or not, we are part of one another.’ Active nonviolence is a process that holds these two realities—of noncooperation with violence but open to the humanity of the violator—in tension. It is like saying to our opponent: On the one hand (symbolized by a hand firmly stretched out and signaling, ‘Stop!’) ‘I will not cooperate with your violence or injustice; I will resist it with every fiber of my being’. And, on the other hand (symbolized by the hand with its palm turned open and stretched toward the other), ‘I am open to you as a human being.’” (Pam McAllister, You Can’t Kill The Spirit, p. 6)

Lastly, let’s consider another easily misinterpreted teaching from the Jesus of the synoptics: Jesus’ instruction not to judge. We’ll do this in Part 3.

There are implications here for us at this moment. We’ll explore those in Part 2.

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