One of the things that I love about you Renita is the way that you thread the needle and connect pieces of the big quilt of life. This “love your enemies’ piece is a good example . It connects beautifully with your other question “What else, or what differently, might President Obama have said in response to the little guy’s question, “Why do people hate you?”. So here is my response President Obama could have said to him ” i dont know because I only feel loved “. I am loved and blessed more than anything else

Yes, Rev. Weems, but perhaps we should brace ourselves for the many other sisters and brothers who are tea party members; there’s many more in our community. And as you may recall, I too am one of those who adamantly disagrees with Pres. Obama on many issues, i.e., the war, the so-called health care/insurance reform (including the part where in the House version of the proposed legislation, reproductive justice/abortion got thrown under a fast moving train), AFRICOM, support for the coup in Honduras, climate change/”clean” coal, support for the death penalty, etc. However, I come from a radical political AND theological tradition, thus I disagree with Sista Tea Party AND Pres. Obama on many issues because like many others, I see where their class interests are so very similar.

Of course, I pray without ceasing for Pres. Obama’s continued safety, there are too many sho nuff armed militias, etc., out here, but at the same time, I also pray for those of us that will continue to organize and raise our voices against his many harmful policies. My heart also breaks for the many Iraqi, Afghani and Pakistani children who are now born with horrific birth defects, and I shudder at the thought that 5 to 15 years from now, the babies of our U.S. troops will also be born with similar birth defects.

Lastly, I too have been publicly and privately attacked, ridiculed, threatened, snubbed, etc., because I dared not “drink the Kool Aid” and engaged in public forums to state my political disagreements Pres. Obama, based on research and his voting history as a elected official. You would have thought I dyed my hair blonde, fried my hair and dug out a new jar of Nadinola, the reactions I received from some, even though many of them stood next to me for hours in the cold to protest/organize rallies against the war against the people of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Clearly, in times like these, to paraphrase Dr. King, many of us will have to decide where we stand on issues that matter, “the ultimate measure of a man (and woman) is not where he (or she) stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he (or she) stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Amen.

I keep thinking about how Christian identity has ceased to be - or never was - the tie that binds across ethnic or racial lines. Even when the lines are contrived as in the alleged differences between the Tutsis and Hutus.
“Love” is hard, too hard most times. I have a hard time praying for my enemies sometimes. Sometimes all I can manage is to call their names and trust them to God. But I keep trying.

No stomp speeches please. Although I touch upon the issue here, please remember that this is not a post about whether one agrees or disagrees with Obama’s policies. It’s about what loving one’s enemies might mean and how it’s done. Maybe the fact that my patience is wearing very thin is proof that I’m failing at the thing Jesus demands.

The good news is that Jesus didn’t command us to love our enemies as we love ourselves! I agree that the instruction to love our enemies is a hard one, but at least we can acknowledge them as enemies! That’s some satisfaction! Perhaps another way to consider Jesus’s demand is heard in the saying “kill them with kindness”.

Perhaps Jesus is also referencing the enemies within. My own healing and wholeness as a black woman has come come from befriending “the enemy within”, from incorporating rather than denying the slave in me who now and again begins talking me into considering the plantation behind me as a better option to the freedom before me, the enemy in me who gets triggered into both despair and rage when I see her embodied in flesh and blood sista talk. Thankfully Jesus does not say “like her”. So we wont be best friends. Jesus says “love her, bless her, do good to her”. Loving her might mean speaking to her truth in love i.e get behind me Satan. Blessing her might mean acknowledging that her fear is real. Doing her good might mean shooting for her own good … with Harriet’s gun of course.

Dr Weems, I enjoy your writings and the thoughtful exchange of opinions on this blog. I’ve never written on any blog site but this question is profoundly personal for me as I have been working through recent hurts. I recently left my church after 18 years. Details aside, I saw hate, deception, and retaliation in action and it grieved me deeply. I think a popular gospel song calls it “love abuse”. The experience has cured me of church and I desire now only to worship.

I asked the same question over and over in my mind about how to love my enemies and I believe the answer is profoundly simple; I can’t. Not on my own anyway. I believe Jesus asks us to love our enemies because we can’t. No different that Jesus commanding Peter to walk on the water. Peter couldn’t walk on water when he listened to the winds and waves. We have to love our enemies by faith.

We have to accept the fact that we are incapable on our own and ask God to fill us with that love that covers a multitude of sins and which also allows us to bring our limited faith, resources, and inability to deal with big problems to the one who is more than able to make us sufficiently bold and powerful to speak truth and do justice.

I so hear you. It is true; sometimes it seems that the call to love our enemies is just too much to ask. Recently I have been particularly aware of my failure to love - as much as I wish I could, as much as I wish I could make the more loving choices, I just don’t, and can’t! I don’t feel able. In a very literal sense, I have been aware that I just cannot do it, I can’t get myself to act/choose love. And the failure feels so horrible - so - AGH! And then that’s when I realized - that was the moment (of which I am too infrequently aware!) I remembered that there really are some things/capacities that fall beyond our own individual abilities - and so I prayed. I really do need the Spirit’s help.

Yeah, all this is well and good. But what does this look like when you’re in a battle for your life? Or a battle of ideals? Or a battle of agendas? Does loving one’s enemies means not avoiding battles where winning means only one of us is left standing? What does it mean to love someone who is intent upon your demise?

There are no easy answers, I know. I’m just wondering how you live with your enemies in an increasingly atmosphere and when your enemy is not the other, but someone who looks a lot like you?

i know how you feel sometimes when you talked about loving your enemies. i mean you’re right, i feel that way to many times. that is a tall order to fill to love those who do us wrong, cuss us out and back bite and the likes. and i’m sure your readers may feel the same way. but i would submit the fact that Jesus is who he claimed to be and may have had a much better perspective than us humans do. i wrote about the perspective in my blog at www.todaystruthwriter.com in a post call “An Ant Staring up at a Mountain” posted 11/12/09–love to get your opinion and some of your readers to give their comments also.

Dr. Weems I find my circle of friends getting smaller and smaller, I find myself with no one to share my joys, aspirations or thoughts with. I struggle with the fact that you can’t live in this world alone but I find myself getting closer and closer to doing just that! I also have recently found myself following a recommendation of yours, I journal and I pray. I guess I can love my enemies, however I do keep them at a distance and those I’m forced to deal with only get the “shell” or “indifferent” me! I do bow down but I do not argue my point, God knows…

Dr. Renita,

What a post! I try to remember that “we wrestle not against flesh and blood but principalities and powers.” This was never more clear than when I was watching the Sarah Palin interviews. As a woman, I think some of the critism is extremely sexist. The current Newsweek cover is repulsive. I commiserate with the challenges she faces raising teenagers.
But I also understand that she was a tool of the devil, when she hijacked the healthcare debate with lies about death panels. I agree with her right to life positions, but see a demonically induced blindness that refuses to understand that to preserve “a culture of life” it is wicked to cut funding for social services that benefit woman and children. And that “crisis pregnancy” centers heavily rely on these government agencies to refer their clients for the tangible support they will need.
Satan has clouded her mind so that she does not understand the link between “being an advocate for special needs” children and the vast amount of public funds it will take to support a special needs child throughout her lifetime.
Demonic powers were at work were at her rallies when they shouted “death to Obama” and she did not loudly denounce them.
It was not a lack of love that motivated Harriet Tubman to point her gun at any would be turncoats. She loved her people dearly. She just didn’t truck with devil.

If you mean kill or be killed I think the answer is pretty obvious. Nobody is going to stand around, blithely quoting scripture and espousing the virtue of turning the other cheek and forgiveness. Nah, that’s not what we do, we fight to win. There is nothing worse than a glib answer to a serious question like this. I can hear the proper church ladies now telling me “God won’t bless you!” “I love everybody”, “look for the good in a situation”, “pray about it honey”, “I let the lord fight my battles” followed closely by their annoying blue blood tittering. Let me stay focused. Sorry.

Our intent is to be the one left standing and thinking about Queen Esther, she didn’t need to destroy the King in order to save herself and her people. Although it did take Mordecai to tell her “don’t think just because you’re in the big house, you’re safe!” that she found the courage to act boldly. She didn’t avoid the battle. So must we destroy the enemy to be victorious? What does that do to us? Haman built a gallows for Mordecai and found himself its victim.

You’re right, there are no easy answers, but folks bent on setting up the demise of someone else usually get the best or worst of the plot (depending on your perspective) and sometimes we get to see it. It isn’t always pretty. You think you’re able to pump the fist and declare “Ain’t God Good!” but I don’t think so. Many years ago I had a former friend make it her personal ambition to destroy me and she nearly did with my assistance. Rather than carry myself as the person of integrity and character that I was supposed to be, I got down in the dirt with her. I fought tooth and nail and all that did was cause people to look at me sideways. Blessed with wise and caring friends who reminded of who I am and that I was just a little better than that kind of carrying on I checked myself and stepped away from the fight only to be told a few months later that this person had stolen money from the organization that had us pitted as enemies and also stolen from another organization of which she was a member. She was stealing to keep up appearances. She sought treatment in a mental hospital as a way to avoid being prosecuted. That sister was put through the mill of public humiliation, abandonment, and rejection. And if that wasn’t enough her husband left her for a white woman. Sadly it took all that for me to stop being angry. It didn’t feel good; I couldn’t jump for joy, pump my fist or rejoice in the justice of it all. I felt a kick to the gut and began to pray for her and for me.

“Love All, Trust A Few, Do Harm to None”
Shakespeare

Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God.
John Wesley

I am a recovering long time, multi-generational grudge holder. Forgiveness and praying for your enemy is quite new to me and I actually wrote about it earlier this week. I am learning that fighting hate/enemies/anger with love is the only way to win the battle. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy. That just means that it’s RIGHT.

@ et al. Love enemies: sometimes. Pray for enemies: always. BUT, and this is a BIG BUT, I still don’t know how to protect myself from an enemy bent on killing me. Yesterday, the president of our seminary said he felt like the anarchist vitriole in the air is leading to civil war and wonders where the line will be this time. we know that a portion of our society has armed themselves to “take our country back.” I admit to feeling, not just verbally assaulted, but also physically under threat. Traumatized. And, yes, it feels the SAME way it felt living in central Alabama in the 60s and 70s when white farming neighbors rode in trucks at night, shooting off their riffles, and burning crosses in yards. We think it won’t “go back to that.” It already has, complete with God is on our Side language. The latest: parafernalia that says “Pray for Obama” and the Psalm 109:8 (and by inference 9) on the bottom: “May his days be few; may another take his office. May his wife be a widow and his children orphans.” That is not a veiled threat. Obama is just a visible sign of the threat. But the threat is to a freedom for people of color, the language around “immigrants”–they are NOT talking about immigrants for Europe, women’s freedom, and so on. So, how do we organize a resistance that saves us when mainstream conservative “christianity” has been co-opted (used to be burning crosses were accompanied with sheets, but now pastors are openly praying for the death of the president-WOW)? I know I crossed the word line, Renita, but there it is. We are not in “theoretical” danger; this is REAL. NOW what???? I don’t have an answer at all….

Ok, what I DIDN’T say is that I think most of us are thinking in personal terms (at least from the responses I read), but I think we are under a political, public threat–about more than us. It’s about the body politick, groups of the population.

@Thanks everyone for your responses. I’m learning a lot.

@Thanks Val for getting it.

“What does it mean to love someone who is intent upon your demise?” I’m pretty sure that some variation of this question is asked in the White House every day–politically and personally. Just the other day a fringe group protested at the Obama children’s schools. Michelle Obama is a better woman than I am because I might have organized my own protest full of mothers exercising their right to bear arms at exactly the same time. But as I digress, I guess I’ve shown you that I have no idea how to love the kind of enemy that threatens your children for political gain. And this was a “church.” So, even if we limit the conversation to “Christians” there is still no common ground. Some “Christians” are still confused about the Bible itself (http://amazinggracebaptistchurchkjv.com/Download99.html), forget about its message, so I doubt there will be any internal debates about the public framing of Christianity.

Peace, All,

I’ve always had a problem with this one, but I’ve tried. I usually end up angry with myself because I forgive and/or forget too much and get hurt. That’s why I focus on staying away from enemies — far away.

Last year to commemorate MLK Day, I read Dr. King’s book book Strength to Love and found real pastoral guidance from the Gospel preacher on how to love an enemy:

* Maintain the capacity to forgive and reconcile;
* Don’t confuse love with sentimental outpouring;
* Remember, even your enemies still have some good inside; and
* Don’t seek to defeat or humiliate your enemies, but rather to win their friendship and understanding.

“We should be happy that he did not say, ‘Like your enemies.’…” Dr. King wrote in that book. “Like is a sentimental and affectionate word. How can we be affectionate toward a person whose avowed aim is to crush our very being and place innumerable stumbling blocks in our path?” … That is impossible. But Jesus recognized that love is greater than like. When Jesus bids us to love our enemies, … he is speaking of agape, understanding and creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. Only by following this way and responding with this type of love are we able to be children of our Father who is in heaven.”

I’m not big enough in God for this right now. I still try to stay away from right wing “Christian” radio and TV, and white liberals who are cunningly racist. But I found Dr. King’s instructions comforting because he acknowledged the true meaning of an enemy — someone who means you harm, not a friend that you had an argument with, which is how Christians often approach this saying. King’s writing about it says to me he struggled with it as well, and I found that helpful.