…may not be quite what many have been led to think. Click the link to learn more.
Love Impatient, Love Unkind
Stephen Herreid – published on 01/09/14
Loving our enemies is every bit as complicated as any friendship — and demands as much work.
The other day, I got a chance to do something I haven’t done since college: I sat down and watched Youtube videos late into the night. Two videos really stayed with me. The first was a Christian video about love, aiming, I suppose, at bettering the effectiveness of Christian evangelism. In the beginning of the video, the host complains that Christians are always ignoring Christ’s command to love our enemies. Then a young group of Christian artists demonstrate how we always complicate the matter until we feel justified in being cruel to our enemies out of hatred or fear. In a brief skit, a father instructs his son to be tough and stick it to his enemies. The boy replies “But I thought you always told me to love my enemies.” The father is stumped for a moment, then stammers out his justification. “It’s tough love. Yeah, that’s it, it’s tough-loving your enemies.” The video cuts back to the host, who rolls his eyes. “Jesus wouldn’t want us to live with hate or fear,” he insists. “I know it’s a really uncomfortable thought, but what if the only complicated thing about loving our enemies … is that it’s not complicated?”
The real uncomfortable thought is that loving our enemies is every bit as complicated as any friendship (think of your least-favorite relative or friend of your spouse’s) — and demands as much work. In a time that many Christian leaders now call “post-Christian,” with state and culture stacked against us, I’ve always been surprised to hear Christians admonishing each other for being “uncharitable” to the world far more often than I hear voices raised in righteous indignation against the enemies of Christ.
A Song of Joy by Caroline Furlong 