Loving our Enemies in a Loveless Culture
In a divided America, it was probably inevitable that the Church would be divided along similar lines. An observation: one side of the American Church seems to love the lost more than they love the (right-wing) Church; whereas the other side seems to love the Church more than they love the (left-wing) lost. Both "sides" seem to be fixated on the harm the other side can do to those whom they love. How can we move forward when both sides have dug their heels in, refusing to engage or hear the other side?
The core issue that is lacking in my own life is a lack of tenderness and genuine mercy towards those who are wearying me with their dogmatic self-righteousness. This evaluation of “them”, of course, presupposes that I am content with my own lack of dogmatism or sense of my own rightness. The command of Jesus to love our enemies is critical to engage with in our prayer lives right now. We are to pray for them, to bless them with our words, and to serve them in meekness and humility. This is the most challenging element of the gospel but also the most beautiful.
In all of my years teaching the Sermon on the Mount, this is the one that folks most want to negotiate. Jesus put his very life into the hands of His enemies and emerged victorious in love. We are too afraid of what our enemies can do to us emotionally to love and serve them. I think that we have arrived at a destination, culturally, where we feel that certain actions perpetuated by the "other side" exempt us from biblical mandates to love. Ultimately, we need to wrestle with what Jesus meant by "love your enemies" and not find the justified escape because of what is done to us. If Corrie Ten Boom could find the grace to love her tormentors and ultimately serve and bless them, why are we exempt as it relates to the possibilities of grace?
Fear is not conquered by "healthy boundaries", fear is overcome by love perfected in us by God's grace. In renegotiating Jesus' terms, we've removed "mature love" as our highest goal and replaced it with "self-care".
A life filled with wisdom comes from years of failure due to lack of wisdom. A life filled with the love of Jesus comes from years of fighting through pain to continue to choose the risk of loving and serving weak, broken, and therefore fundamentally unsafe people. We will continually fail the people around us, yet recover and grow wiser because of it by the grace of God. The people around us will continually fail us, yet we can fight to "keep them in the game" through loyal love that reflects what Jesus showed to us in our failures.
Our ultimate destination as a people is to display the transcendent love of Jesus to the lost through the expression of that love to one another in the Church and through the Church. Jesus' agenda for us is to conquer our fears and help us deeply love a very unlovable Church.