“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”- Annie Lamott’s priest friend Tom
“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, that you may be children of your heavenly Father.”- Matthew 5:43-45 (NIV)
“It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it’s the parts I do understand.”- Mark Twain
In Chapter 12 (“Our Enemies”), the final chapter of The Narrow Path, Rich Villodas makes this important observation. Jesus’ teaching to love our enemies might be the hardest of all His sayings. Because, Rich stresses, our culture trains us to see enemies in two primary ways:
- avoid them at any cost.
- destroy them by any means.
Now, Rich muses, some people claim that they don’t really have enemies. However, Rich challenges that assumption. Certainly, on one level, we define an enemy as a person or group intent on harming us. In word or deed. More broadly, though, Rich describes an enemy as anyone you find it hard to love. For the follower of Jesus, to love and pray for our enemies is a matter of obedience and formation.
Therefore, Pastor Villodas counsels:
“Do you have enemies because you’re following Jesus on the narrow path or is it because you’re irresponsibly hurting others in his name? . . . The enemies we have as followers of Jesus reveal whether we’re living like him or not. The right kind of enemies (as strange as that sounds) are those who disparage us because we have on otherworldly love and care for the powerless. It seems to me Christians often make the ‘wrong kind’ of enemies because of our refusal to love well.”
In conclusi8on Rich states, Jesus calls His followers away from enemy hate and toward enemy love.
Today’s question: When have you created God in your own image? Please share.
Tomorrow’s blog: “Spiritual maturity measure”
I feel like Mark Twain hit the nail on the head! It is very hard to follow some parts of the Bible that we do understand. It is difficult to love and pray for our enemies that intend to do us harm! This is exactly why we need Jesus living in our hearts . He teaches us how to love and have compassion for those who are against us. We can do hard things when we have the Lord of Lords on our side!!