To you who are listening I say, love your enemies. If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that? After all, even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what merit is there is that? After all, even sinners do as much” (Gospel of Jesus 7:2-4)*It is a bit troubling to discover that Jesus did not share the common view that God agrees with our opinion of others. Instead, he invited us to pray about joining in God’s high expectations and hope for all humanity .
It remains a revolutionary idea. Our traditional social and political arrangements reflect tribal loyalties based on our instincts for self-preservation. They provide us with a safe “home base” to explore our world. Jesus called us to replace those tribal loyalties with a more universal loyalty that finds a “home base” in honoring and respecting (loving) all of God’s creation. (See Reconciliation and Love's Definition).
Jesus’ call for this new loyalty offers a far more likely foundation for human self-preservation than the tribal loyalties we usually rely on. Unfortunately, both biblical tradition and history are full of examples that illustrate a broad unwillingness to respond to Jesus’ call. A few examples: Both Hebrew scripture and significant portions of the New Testament model hostility and even hatred toward enemies. When the church burned heretics it was identifying enemies while using fear to assure at least outward loyalty to its tribal ways. In 1961 Fidel Castro declared that continued loyalty to the Cuban revolution required an enemy. Contemporary political campaigns are often based on describing its opponents as enemies and targeting them with falsehoods and partial truths. Likewise, we can hear church leaders propagate an “us versus them” world view as a tool for creating loyalty to their group and personal leadership. Many LGBT people have experienced the negative consequences of that strategy.
The danger in being someone’s enemy is in returning the favor by accepting their enmity and labeling them as our own enemy. In a real world sense that dynamic is probably inescapable but the danger is in responding in kind. When that happens we give the enemy the power to define who we are and set the rules of our relationships. (More in a later posting.)
The instruction to pray for our enemies has often been understood as a prayer that somehow God would intervene in their values, world view, and behavior so that they would come to accept our perspectives and be more like us. The arrogance of that notion is the assumption that we have “the right way;” that we understand God’s views; or that we have the sole understanding of how creation is supposed to work—the implication being that all other views are wrong.
Over the years I have come to understand that praying for our enemies is less about them than it is about me. Jesus’ Prime Directive is to love or honor and respect all that God has created. To pray for an enemy is to seek insight and understanding sufficient to honor that person’s creation. (Perhaps meditation is a better contemporary word than prayer.)
Any increased insight or understanding does not compel me to agree with such a person, only that I come to understand. Once understood, what do I do about it? Everyone will agree that it is a struggle. Likewise, we cannot focus only on understanding our enemy. We have biases, prejudices, and structures in our world view that have to be examined in relation to our own spiritual health and willingness to honor and respect others. Jesus’ teachings also include strategies to pursue those objectives.
Obviously, there is much more to live and talk out. This is not a solitary adventure. Your comments are welcome.
*The Gospel of Jesus. Robert W. Funk and the Jesus Seminar. Santa Rosa, CA, Polebridge Press, 1999.
Reconciling Ministries Network mobilizes United Methodists of all sexual orientations and gender identities to transform our Church and world into the full expression of Christ’s inclusive love.
Beyond the Hatred: First Love, First Loyalty
by Peter L. DeGroote
If any come to me and do not hate their own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—they cannot be my disciples.Luke:14;26 (SV).
1. About 50 pastors in a continuing education class were asked if they had ever preached on the above verse. Few hands went up. Nevertheless, Jesus appears to have said something very close to those words so we are obliged to look further.* Two guidelines for biblical interpretation can help:
A. The first guideline: Variations in Jesus’ words from gospel to gospel often reflect the conditions in the communities out of which the various gospels came.
• Many early Christian communities were racked with emotional turmoil over lost family relationships. Ancient peoples had no identity without family. Orphans often became beggars or bandits; some sold themselves into slavery in order to be part of a household, household often being a synonym for family.**
• Many early Christian converts were disowned by their families and persecuted by their communities. Some LGBT people have experienced similar rejection by family, friends, and congregation and we have struggled with the power or our emotional responses.
• A harsh, even hateful reaction toward those who reject or persecute us is not uncommon, particularly when we have to go through the trauma of having to find new relationships and form new families. That is true for many LGBT folks, for many groups through history, and certainly for the early church.
B. The second guideline: Jesus' teachings are logically consistent, even if they challenge our understanding (or wishes). For this reason, use of the word "hate" raises a red flag.
• Recall Jesus’ prime directive, the rule of love .
• Primary to the rule of love is the forgiveness of others. (Forgive us…as we forgive them…). Hatred forfeits forgiveness and contradicts the rule of love.
2, Any who have experienced rejection and persecution from families, friends, and congregations understand the emotional turmoil that can lead to the feelings of “hate” expressed in this verse. It is reasonable to conclude that this use of the word “hate” arises out of the emotional turmoil of broken relationships and subsequent persecution of those early community members.
3. But something remains; a spiritual message at the heart of the verse. Where Old Testament prophets spoke of idolatry in the form of pagan religious images, Jesus spoke of idolatry in the form of human values and loyalties interfering with his Way of living in harmony with God and God’s creation.
4. Today we are challenged by loyalties demanded by our employment, social class, neighborhood, political party, nation, and even our religious denomination or community. More often than not, these create divisions between people, even hatreds. (The daily news is sufficient evidence.)
6. We are called to choose a Way of life that is often costly for our relationships, careers, and personal security. We can easily doubt that calling because living in harmony with God and God’s creation can seem unrealistic when many about us are doing otherwise. But we are called to learn to live in harmony even with those who would criticize, demean, and persecute us. That’s called reconciliation. It’s easier to write about than to do.
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* The saying appears in Luke and twice in Thomas (55 & 101. That suggests its source is in a lost collection of sayings that the authors of Mark, Matthew, and John were unaware of or chose not to use. However, there is a significant variation in Matthew (55:1): Those who love father and mother more than me are not worthy of me… Perhaps Matthew’s authors knew the saying source but were also uncomfortable with the word “hate.” However, Matthew’s context is much different from Luke’s.
There are, of course, other passages which call us to first loyalties but I find this one worth noting because so many LGBT folks can identify with the emotions involved.
**The ancient family could:
• Demand absolute loyalty and obedience in a patriarchal structure.
• Often aggressively competed with others as many businesses do today.
• Were often the source of hatred and violence directed toward other families in what we call clan warfare.
Posted in Author: Peter DeGroote, Biblical Commentary, Inner Experience, Reconciling Process, Relationships, Spirituality | Permalink | Comments (0)
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