Loving your (political) enemies

Image credit: Police Dogs Attack Demonstrators, Birmingham Protests, © Charles Moore. Source.

In Wednesday morning bible study, we're reading Luke and Acts. Last week, we considered Jesus' "Sermon on the Plain" in Luke 6.

In it, Jesus taught the upside-down values of the kingdom, casting an inclusive vision of a new society, that we get to strive to make real here and now. It starts with the Beatitudes (blessing for the poor, woe to the rich), continues with an invitation to love your enemies, and concludes with warning and encouragement: Build your house on the rock.

We need wisdom to understand and live this wisdom. For example, Jesus spoke what seems like a contradiction. Right after inviting forgiveness, not judgment and condemnation, Jesus said, "A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of." Both are true: forgiveness and being clear on good and evil. Exercise good judgment about others, and do not be judgy. Don't put up with bad behavior in the name of Jesus. Give the grace of recognizing when people are not themselves, and trust your experience: they are who they repeatedly show themselves to be. Be clear and firm, humble and merciful. All of the above.

The central question that arose for a couple in the bible study group was about loving enemies and forgiving enemies. Specifically public figures, politicians whose values and behavior is at odds with their own. Putin was named. Perhaps you would name others. Here is the gist of my response.

Forgiveness is a tool of love. It is not the only tool in the toolbox of love. Sometimes forgiveness is not the loving response, or not the first loving response. For example, interrupting ongoing harm is another tool of love. Love first of all stops the harm. Forgiveness is useful later, along with repentance, in the healing process. Resisting harm and clearly naming it as such is a way to love our enemies. Abusers often demand forgiveness as a way to avoid accountability and as a way to keep abusing.

Love in the public arena is justice. Politicians intentionally confuse us about public and private and their relationship to us. They're just "Uncle Joe" or someone we want to have a beer with. They position themselves as members of our private lives, so we would extend the same cheap forgiveness that expects no repentance or cessation of harm that we often by default extend to family and friends. It's a tactic of all parties and likely all nations, manipulation to avoid accountability.

This isn't love. Fawning is not what Jesus taught. The toolbox of love can include demanding more or better, even as we do good to those who hate us; bless those who curse us; pray for those who mistreat us.

Thanks be to God.

Pastor Clark Olson-Smith