Love Thy Enemy

 

There are many scriptures that are hard to stomach. One in particular comes from Jesus Christ himself, "You have heard it said love your neighbors and hate your enemies, but I say unto you, love your enemy.." (Matthew 5:43-44). Love your enemy? How can one love their enemy? This verse alone has been debated by scholastics and scholars; by priests and philosophers. What does it mean to love thy enemy? How does one feel affection for someone that physically or emotionally wants to destroy you?

Interpreting this verse has been attempted throughout the ages. For the Christian Crusaders, to love your enemy was to kill them. Strange notion, love by killing? According to Canon Law, to kill an enemy was to save them from the perpetual bitterness and enmity that they carry. A crusader saw it as his duty to rescue his enemy via the blade from his baser instincts. Citing King Saul and King David helped ratify this thinking. In the case of the Kings of Israel, God told them to slay the wicked so that their wickedness would not infect the Israelites. In this way love acts as a shield.

However, the counter argument to this view that has some merit is that if you kill your pagan enemy, you have denied them redemption and now they wallow in the fires of hell. So how can cutting down or blasting to oblivion your enemy be love if it means their eternal damnation? Perhaps Jesus meant that we are to love our enemies by sharing the Gospel with them, offering them an olive branch of Christ's cross to make them our brothers.

Then there is the dispute of what kind of love Jesus was talking about. In Greek alone there are seven kinds of love. In Hebrew there are three kinds of love. Only in the English language do we limit this powerful word to one noun. I will use the Hebrew definitions because the Greek is so specific and speculating on which of the seven would take too much time. In Hebrew love is separated into three words: Raya, Ahava, and Dod. Raya is friendship or companionship love. It is plutonic in nature and varying in degree of affection. Just as you have different friends ranging from acquaintance to best friend, Raya encompasses the range. Ahava is the deep soul bond, one where your soul and another soul are one and you are what is so often called soul mates. This can happen between same sex and opposite sex. In the case of same sex you have David and Jonathan who were blood brothers and cared for each other so deeply that it broke their hearts when Saul went mad and got between them. Ahava also takes a romantic turn in the opposite sex form, when a gent and a lady connect and then commit. Ahava at its core is committal love; it requires devotion to the utmost; in a plutonic form this is brotherhood or sisterhood, in romantic it is marriage. Finally there is Dod, which is carnal or physical affection. This takes its ultimate form in intercourse. Taking into account what Jesus was saying, I think we can rule out Dode for sure.

So then it is down to Raya and Ahava. It is difficult to believe that enemies could create a soul bond between each other, but it has happened. During the Crusades many Christians and Muslims became so close that during the night they pitched camp together and talked, drank, ate, and joked with one another around the campfire, and then in the morning continued combat against each other. Dizzying, I know. I would argue that it is impossible to really commit to an enemy in love, when you know that they could at any point betray you and slay you either literally or figuratively in say reputation and etc.

Thus I argue that Jesus possibly meant Raya, friendship love. He was saying we must love our enemies like a friend and desire good towards them like we do friends. Being a friend does not mean that you trust them. Even the greatest of friends harbor some reservations about each other and can be prepared for a parting of ways. But perhaps Jesus was talking about a different kind of love not included in either the Hebrew or Greek. What if he meant honor? The Fifth Commandment of the Lord is "Honor your Father and Mother." Honor tends to denote reverence and respect. That is exactly what I am getting at. What if Jesus meant we should have respect for our enemies?; that we remember they are human and that we could have been born into their disposition or suffered the way that makes them what they are. Yes, honor is more befitting. On the battlefield you can show respect to your enemy, you can decided not to demean them and desecrate their body, you can be kind and love them as yourself. How would you treat yourself if you were your enemy? Would you want your corpse cut into a thousand pieces or peed on? Respect is the love I believe Jesus was talking about. You can show respect to your enemy by being merciful and compassionate. That compassion can even be a swift death for your enemy.

Living in an age when offenses are not settled with swords, loving your enemy is a little different, but still the same premise. We are to respect our adversaries, those who in the workforce, school, neighborhood, and rest of our daily lives offend and assail us with words. We should seek to diffuse, not provoke our enemies. We should be kind, but stout and strong in character. We should pray for those who persecute us and remember no matter how deplorable their behavior or despicable they are, even our enemies are created in the image of God and thus deserve at least that respect.