The limits to love of enemies.
Barnabas62
Shipmate, Host Emeritus
in Purgatory
I’m opening this thread following some tangential discussions in the sola scriptura thread.
Are there limits and if so what do you think they are?
Are there limits and if so what do you think they are?
Comments
Could you post the message that prompted this thread?
The limit of loving your enemies is therefore love for the people whom your enemies are enemies to.
I suppose, being aware of the risk of arguing the command to live one's enemies away entirely, if one's not a saint that includes oneself.
This question follows the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Personally I find it very hard to love people like the originators and perpetrators of the Final Solution and other outrages approaching that scale (e.g Pol Pot and Cambodia). There’s a point where words like love and forgiveness stick in the throat.
That sums it up nicely. If one is a saint or not.
“Love the sinner, hate the sin” is a bit ambiguous for me. Can encourage condescension, which isn’t good for us.
Love doesn't mean being nice, and it doesn't mean helping someone do what they want to do. It means earnestly seeking what is best for them as you're able, sometimes that means undermining what they want to do. And yes, I think sometimes it requires a certain amount of patronizing behavior in the case of people who are truly and profoundly broken.
Honestly, I don't mind "Love the sinner, hate the sin," the problem with the phrase is that people get really weird ideas about what constitutes a sin. Lacking consensus, we end up trying to manipulate and control people over things that aren't any of our business.
I might also add a caveat of "social sins" versus "personal sins." I think Paul even addressed this in an Epistle, talking about some personal sins being so personal that, realistically, it's between them and God. If I were still persuadable that consensual gay sex qualified as such (not to open that argument up, just thinking of a clear example) it'd be one. Two grown men enjoying themselves isn't anyone else's business in the absence of other injury. That's between each individual and God.
Most of the "sins" we think of are social since and if I love both the perpetrator and the victim, my wish in love should be for the perpetrator to stop directly sinning against the victim. If I must act with violence to end that violence, it is only justified insofar as is necessary to actually stop that action, and then I must refrain and try to find the least harmful way to correct the perpetrator; or likely more constructively, help the victim.
Love, I think, is not required to be milquetoast or passive. If i love you and you're committing assault in my sight, my love for you does not stay my hand if I try to stop you from acting in such a fashion. It just means I should seek not to add injury to you beyond what is necessary for cessation and, maybe, correction. And I'm really skeptical of violence as a means of correction. Too often I think "revenge" looks like sadistic wrath wearing a cape.
Those are some thoughts.
Yes. I would think you should do your utmost to avoid that situation, but yes. I might argue that you're obliged to if you're a Christian, which is why it's very hard for Christians to be soldiers or cops or politicians of any kind.
Failing to perform due diligence to avoid that situation is a failure of love, in my books.
He did, and I think it's an example of one of his poorer instructions.
Bertrand Russell, a well known and definitely non-Christian philosopher, wrote this in his History of Western Philosophy about Jesus’s precept. (It’s worth adding that Russell was a pacifist.)
From memory.
“There is nothing to be said against it, except most people find it too difficult to follow”.
(He also wrote a book entitled “Why I am not a Christian”.)
The situation is upon one. How does it make it hard to be a True Christian soldier, or cop, or politician? When the enemy is at the gate. On the street. In your home.
What difference does being a Christian make?
One can have compassion when ones enemy is defeated. Not in the heat of battle. Or even if one loses and survives. One can understand, forgive, if that's ever relevant.
I’ve no idea what impact that had on the injured soldiers or their comrades but his bravery set aside any accusations of cowardice.
Did that make a difference? Who can tell what the effect of brave and kind behaviour will be on anyone else. Oh I’m sure it had no effect on the overall outcome of the war. On the subsequent peace, who can tell? It impressed me, that’s all I can say for sure.
This is the point where C. S. Lewis suggested that, if we were going to work on loving our neighbors, we had maybe better start with someone a bit easier than the Gestapo.
Those of you who follow the prayer thread know that I'm dealing with a particular enemy at the moment who must be loved (that is, not forced out of a job or otherwise have her life made a burden to her) even though 20 years ago, she betrayed me and forced me out of a job, and got me blackballed among other employers in my field. And to the best of my knowledge, has never repented the fact.
I am in a position (maybe I should say, I WAS in a position, she's been employed here for a while now and things may be changing) to do exactly those things to her. I hold sufficient power in my organization that I probably could have succeeded, and I'm not exaggerating here.
But I couldn't, because Jesus. Because I'm very emotionally attached to him and his opinion of what I do matters to me--more even than my human desire to get revenge on someone who caused my family a great deal of damage.
Last spring, when it became clear that she was on the verge of being hired at my organization, I had to make a decision. I chose to hold my fire and refrain from doing her the harm she did me. And I go on making that decision every day, sitting on my hands and praying. I pray to do what's right in Jesus' eyes, and lately I've begun praying for her personal welfare and the welfare of her family, because that practice is the only way I know to kill the feelings of resentment and hatred in the heart.
We aren't reconciled yet, we may never be reconciled in this lifetime. I have a bad case of PTSD, partly as a result of her actions, and when I see her coming, I duck into the bathroom or something. I'm going to go on protecting myself until God or HR makes it clear that that's no longer necessary, because there's nothing in the Bible that says I have to be stupid.
But while I was struggling in prayer over this whole mess last spring, I had the rare and totally unexpected opportunity to see Jesus' face when I relinquished my enemy to him, to do with what he pleased (knowing he'd try for repentance and reconciliation, of course, that's the way he is). Yeah, some sort of vision or something... and it knocked me sideways for months, just the sheer blast of joy and happiness coming off him. I can't and I won't disturb that joy. So she's safe from me.
Wow! Just wow!
Courage comes in many forms. Some of them quite unexpected.
I think most conscientious objectors were brave to start with and only too aware of the personal cost. Honestly, I’m not sure I could have followed their example. But I admire and respect it.
Absolutely. Doubly brave. Brave on brave. Not me.
Thanks for reminding me of the C S Lewis Gestapo observation. I had read it - but forgotten. Whether that was a convenient or an inconvenient forgetting I’m not sure.
But your RL story reminds me of a story from the life of the Dutch Christian Corrie ten Boom. Following years of helping Dutch Jews to hide, she was discovered and she and her sister were sent to Ravensbruck, a Nazi concentration camp for women. Her much loved sister died there.
Some years later, she was sharing, in a church in Germany, something of her experiences before captivity. At the end, a man came forward. To her horror, she recognised him as a Ravenbruck guard. He came up to her and said. “Thank you so much for sharing your experiences. Isn’t it wonderful that we share the faith that Jesus died for our sins.” And he held out his hand.
Corrie said that she froze. She felt revulsion, embarrassment, anger at God that He had put in that situation. And the loss of her sister came back to her anew. She could not say anything, could not raise her hand. Then she felt the influence of the Spirit of God and, almost despite herself, felt her hand rise and was able to shake his.
It’s hard to believe that anyone could have done that. I think she found it hard to believe that she had.
See what I said about due diligence?
Seems to me you're engaging in a framing situation where you're hacking off every piece of reality except the threat to try to force my hand, to allow my endocrine reptile-mind to seize control and generate a bloodbath in the proud name of my continued existence.
Perhaps you overestimate my self importance. And you don't know that I'm very familiar with this rhetorical trick because I've had various people playing it on me since I was a child. I am not a child.
I answered your question the first time. I've also played enough violent video games to understand the tactical mindset of "eliminate their pixelated monster before they eliminate yours."
But I understand being a Christian means we cannot forsake the humanity of our "enemies" and that we must see them as humans first, even if we must kill them.
To me, the discipline of being a Christian and a human in the midst of killing is that you remember what you're doing, why you're doing it, and who you are. Fail, and you fail to be a Christian. And I'm not usually the hellfire and brimstone type, but I think that after a certain kind of loss of that, you lose your soul.
I know some veterans. I sometimes worry about what it did to them because I can see the way they treat themselves, and I can see the way they treat the people around them, similarly. Obviously, how you treat others relates to how you treat yourself.
Anyway, feel free to keep mashing that panic button that you think exists in my mind. I've had it mashed so many times in my life that I think it's kinda stuck. I'm not sure if it's stuck in "off" or "on," but it's definitely stuck.
I answered your question the first time. That answer stands, as do I. I'd probably die in a real life gunfight, but that's just reality for most of us in wars. Survival is a crapshoot and one doesn't get a lot of say in it if one is at the kind of range that you're describing in your scenario.
And come to think of it, based on reports from actual military in my family, emotional panic tends to get you killed in those situations. What will keep your ass alive is cold, ruthless logic. I don't think that rules out a measured compassion.
“The Hiding Place” is a remarkable book. My memories of the later one are not so clear but that story has stayed with me.
Yes, that's a bloody hard target to hit. I'll admit it might not be dissimilar to @Martin54 's example of having to kill someone as a Christian.
I'm not sure I'm qualified to do either, but I think it's technically possible, and so worth striving for.
Clarifying, I don't think it'd be a good idea to practice killing to see if you could do so compassionately. But I think that kind of compassion is worth striving for.
What about when you take prisoners and that prevents you advancing? Causing more deaths on your own side?
It's a challenge. I'm happily not qualified to judge. But I would hope that the aim then would be to keep appropriate discipline.
Laws have a place, and per my previous post, I'm not pacifistic enough to say violence is never appropriate. But while I might understand the need - and I'm reminded of the example of the centurion - I don't know if I'd feel safe in such an organization.
I was only giving an example. You are asking a hypothetical that I cannot answer.
https://the-magpie.org/2020/07/01/lewis-on-loving-our-enemies/
Yeah, I think sometimes people get told "love your neighbor" and "take up your cross" so loudly that they forget to love themselves, so you abase yourself and - in that posture - it's hard to earnestly love anyone else because it's hard to relate to other people except as creatures akin to your abased self.
I'm not always a Lewis fan, so credit to him for nailing the commentary that you can't really love others if you don't first love yourself. It's interesting that people seem to take the capacity to love one's self for granted. I wonder if the kind of self loathing CS Lewis describes is an especially Christian psychology or if you can see it across cultures. Hm.
Re warfare I think the just war thesis and the Geneva Convention show enlightenment. Having just finished my re-read of Antony Beevor’s opus “The Second World War” the catalogued savagery is appalling and it shows what happens when winning is all important and the military are let loose. The worst aspects of human nature come to the forefront.
Memory is imperfect!
It's a reality. What is the Christian way of handling it? Of necessarily executing prisoners in the heat of battle hinging on rapid advance. Or retreat? With regret? That's nice. Do as you would be done by? I'd expect the enemy to summarily execute me.
Not all Christians are pacifists. The majority aren’t. But if you’re not and have signed up or are called up for military service, then you’re subject to military rules. Which in the UK are written in the light of the Geneva Convention.
In the heat of the moment they sometimes get bypassed. But you may be subject to discipline and court martial if you cross the lines. That’s only fair. It’s a modern example of being subject to governing authorities. Turning a blind eye is not unknown either.
As love of enemies is a meaningless piety, beyond natural compassion, which war, like Lenin, poverty, crushes; being open and honest and egalitarian, talking inclusively, freely, endlessly would facilitate love. CBT on a national scale. Social media could avail that. In a century or so. Could. We could lift ourselves up by those bootstraps. In the meantime, don't make enemies. And if they insist, live in peace. If it is possible. Even on this site. There's always Hell...
One of Ian M. Banks' nastier ideas: full on virtual Hell.
The difference with hell on this site is that it's voluntary, entirely. And there's no collateral damage.
I'm ok with that. In some sense you might compare it to BDSM. Some folks find that kind of thing very therapeutic. It's a very different experience than real hell.
Since we've been discussing real world violence, this reminds me that I used to practice Aikido back in the day (remember my old profile pic?) and I used to horse around on a forum called aikiweb. And one thing you learn on aikiweb is that trying to prove your martial mettle in discussion is like trying to prove your cognitive function with a fistfight. Few internet discussions get more entertainingly ridiculous.
The feelings are real, but internet fighting is a rather different affair than real world fighting. And it's important to keep that in mind as we talk.
I still have some faith that if people keep talking in good faith, they'll get somewhere. Trouble is that good faith is expensive, and the other kind is always cheaper. I've gone years on facebook while avoiding the engagement of the "block" button (apart from blatant spammers,) but I've learned it is good for some relationships to tell people "Kindly, fuck off." And that, to me, can be an expression of love.