“Love Your Enemies” Suggestion or Command?

The enemy-love message is not exactly what you’d call “attractional.” Sadly, it’s easier to gather a crowd with the message about a God who blesses our battles and hates our enemies as much as we do. Fear, anger, and hate are more popular than love and more natural to our darker selves. Unrestricted love is neither popular nor natural. It might fit nicely on a billboard or in a country song, but when it comes to actually practicing the kind of love Jesus commands, we’d much rather love in the abstract.

“The first step toward love is a common sharing of a sense of mutual worth and value,” wrote Howard Thurman. “This cannot be discovered in a vacuum or in a series of artificial or hypothetical relationships. It has to be in a real situation, natural, free.”

(An excerpt from my book: WHAT ON EARTH? Considering the Social Implications of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount)