Loving Our Enemies

You've obviously heard about the bombing that took place at the end of the Boston Marathon. It was a terrible, horrible, awful thing, resulting in three deaths and numerous injuries.

I really haven't said much about it, mainly because it seemed to me that once you've said it's terrible, horrible, and awful, there's not much left to say. As I thought about it, though, the words of Jesus in John 5:44 kept coming back to me. Jesus said, “I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

That's hard for us to do. It's even harder in a situation like this, where we're faced with what appears to be a deliberate act of evil. We can, perhaps, pray for the people who did this. But love them?

We don't want to love those people. In fact, we have no desire whatsoever to love them. Our desire is for them to be arrested, convicted, and either executed or thrown in jail for a long, long time. And if they were mistreated while they were in jail, well, many of us would not be too upset about that.

I feel the same way. I have no desire to love those people. But Jesus' words keep coming back to me. This was not something Jesus made optional. Jesus did not say, “love your enemies if you feel like it.” I don't think “but I don't want to” is something Jesus would consider a legitimate excuse.

So what do we do? Love, after all, is an emotion. It's a feeling. How do we make ourselves feel something that we don't feel and have no desire to feel?

It's not easy. I think, though, that Jesus gave us the ultimate example to follow. When Jesus was dying on the cross, he said of those who were responsible for killing him, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

Think about that. In one sense, of course, the people responsible knew exactly what they were doing. They knew they were killing Jesus. They wanted to kill Jesus. They deliberately and purposely killed Jesus.

What I think Jesus meant, though, is that even though they did this on purpose, they did not really realize what they were doing. They thought they were killing someone who was a troublemaker, a heretic, a blasphemer, someone who was opposing God. They did not realize that what they were actually doing was killing the divine Son of God. They did one of the most terrible things it's possible to do, but they did not set out to do a terrible thing. They thought they were doing a good thing. In some way, they thought, and they convinced themselves, as hard as it may be for us to understand, that they were doing God's will.

Maybe that applies here. At this writing, we don't know why the people who did this did it. But it is entirely possible that they did not really realize what they were doing. They did one of the most terrible things it's possible to do, but they may not have set out to do a terrible thing. They may have thought they were doing a good thing. In some way, they may have thought, and they may have convinced themselves, as hard as it is for us to understand, that they were doing God's will.

I don't know whether I will reach a point where I can love the people who did this, but I hope I will. It'll be hard, but I hope I will. Not because I particularly want to, but because I know it's what Jesus wants me to do.