Your Enemies

This Easter Sunday, when I reflect on Christianity in America in the 21st century, there is one concept that we are taught by Jesus that I continue to struggle with. In the sermon on the mount, Jesus commands us, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”(Matt 5:43-44) This is one of his teachings that affirms Jesus’ divinity to me because loving your enemies is a concept that is completely antithetical to human beings. Instinctively, we, humans, hate our enemies – that is part and parcel of deeming someone “an enemy”. Even after dissecting this teaching, it is still a concept that does not make sense on any human philosophical level. No human being would ever think that, much less teach it, so it could not have come from a mere mortal.

Loving our enemies is the hardest thing for us to do. It is even harder in the age of social media, when on a daily basis, we are inundated with so many people who hate us or people who have done things that we hate. Take for example, Karmelo Anthony who stabbed unarmed Austin Metcalf in the heart, killing him on the spot. He has shown no remorse, he blames the victim, he is defiant that he was right in killing a 17-year-old over a seating dispute, how do we love that person? What about José Antonio Ibarra, the illegal alien who raped and murdered Laken Riley, who smashed her skull to pieces, how do we love that person?

The drug cartel members who intentionally bring deadly drugs into this country, knowing that they will kill 100,000 Americans every year, how do we find in our heart to love those people? The Hamas terrorists, who invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, murdered 1,400 innocent Israeli civilians, raped and killed young women, beheaded babies, shot elderly people in the head, and then fled back to Gaza to hide behind Palestinian civilians, using them as human shields, how do we could we ever love those people?

How do we love someone who has so much evil in them? When I think about these people, hate boils up inside of me. I want justice. I want punishment. I want them to suffer the pain that they have inflicted on others. That is the only thing that my finite human mind can understand and accept. But Jesus commands us to do the exact opposite us, to love our enemies. But how can we when our enemies are the human embodiment of hate? How do we love hate? How do we love unrepentant, unremorseful rapists and murderers?

Mother Theresa was once asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, if Hitler is 1 and Jesus is 10, where would you fall on the scale? I imagine if asked the same question, most people would say, 5 or maybe 6. They are not Jesus, but they are definitely not Hitler. They would fall somewhere in the middle of the two extremes. Mother Theresa responded, 1.000000001. We, all, are much closer to Hitler than we are to Jesus, and Jesus still loves us. He does not allow our sins to define us, or define his love for us. He loved us so much that he was willing to go to the cross for us sinners, and for our sins.

Jesus could easily hate us because of our sins – our selfishness, our greed, our nastiness, our pride, our hate. He could hate us for everything that we are that he is not. Yet he loves us anyway. If he can love us, then we can love those who our human minds tell us to hate. That does not mean that murderers and rapists should be let off. Human justice through our legal systems should be allowed to be exacted. Loving our enemies is not about our enemies, it is about us. Murderers and rapists will still be murderers and rapists whether we love them or not. If we choose to hate them, we will become consumed by that hate, and that hate will eventually destroy us from the inside out. But if we choose to love them, if we choose to love the worst among us, we will be redeemed and rejuvenated by that divine love.

__________________________________________________________

Mr. Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University, and a former NFL player, coach, and executive. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.