God has given us a command to “love our enemies.” But because the command is from God, we must believe it is not only a command to be blindly followed; it must also be, somehow, a good strategy. Good for us. Good for the world. Good for God.
But why in the world would loving those who want to hinder or hurt us be good? Martin Luther King, Jr., provided three reasons.
Hatred Leads to Death
Tempting and instinctual as bitterness is when we are faced with oppression or offense, the truth of the matter is that repaying hate with hate is never-ending downward spiral that results in mutual destruction. That is the great tragedy of hate: it fuels nothing but itself. Hatred, unopposed, never ends.
But there is another way. Love puts an end to the chain of hate.
King said about hatred that, “Somebody must have religion enough and morality enough to cut it off and inject within the very structure of the universe that strong and powerful element of love.”
It is a hard thing to do, this injection. Sometimes unspeakably hard. Especially when the hatred formed against us is so vehement, so violent, that returning with anything other than the sword and shield of equal hatred could put us in very real jeopardy. And yet, we must see that the standoff of two opposing hatreds is not the absence of real jeopardy; it is the definition of it.
The only way out is to risk breaking the pattern, to put away our swords, to inject love, even self-sacrificial love, into the cycle of hate.
Hate Destroys the Hated and the Hater
Hate not only harms the hated person, it also distorts the hater. Hate is debilitating and cancerous and eats away at the hater. Haters often don’t notice these self-destructive side effects of their hate, either because they are too concerned with “defending” themselves from their enemies that they don’t see the true sorry state they’re in, or because they believe they are justified in becoming a monster if it means they can slay a monster.
King tells us otherwise:
“There is nothing more tragic than to see an individual whose heart is filled with hate. He comes to the point that he becomes a pathological case. For the person who hates, you can stand up and see a person and that person can be beautiful, and you will call them ugly. For the person who hates, the beautiful becomes ugly and the ugly becomes beautiful. For the person who hates, the good becomes bad and the bad becomes good. For the person who hates, the true becomes false and the false becomes true. That’s what hate does. You can’t see right. The symbol of objectivity is lost. Hate destroys the very structure of the personality of the hater.”
Love Redeems the Hated and the Hater
Love is redemptive. Hate cannot redeem. Love is curative. Hate only festers.
Here is King again:
“If you hate your enemies, you have no way to redeem and to transform your enemies. But if you love your enemies, you will discover that at the very root of love is the power of redemption. You just keep loving people and keep loving them, even though they’re mistreating you. Here’s the person who is a neighbor, and this person is doing something wrong to you and all of that. Just keep being friendly to that person. Keep loving them. Don’t do anything to embarrass them. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with bitterness because they’re mad because you love them like that. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. ‘love your enemies.'”
We love our enemies even though it is hard. We love them even before they show love to us. We love them in a true way that is actually love, not in a fake “I kill you because I love you” way we sometimes want to call “love.”
We love our enemies because the alternative can only lead to death, because hatred ultimately guarantees the mutually assured destruction of both the hated and the hater, and because the opposite fact is true as well, that love has the power to redeem us all.
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