E is for Enemy

“As the mirror steamed over, he wrote on it with his finger.
Love your neighbor
Loathe your neighbor
David liked that. It was poignant and poetic. Julie, he would love. Phil, he would act against. An image of a bomb in a letterbox popped into his mind.”
-          Loathe Your Neighbor ch. 14
 
Is it easier to make friends or enemies? Is it easier to keep friends or enemies? Is it easier to love your friends or your enemies? Most people don’t have enemies because they don’t want them. It usually requires effort to make enemies although sometimes you can incur someone’s continuous wrath without trying, or without even knowing you are the object of their hatred. The point is you generally have to something wrong to a person, or to have them do something wrong to you, to make them an enemy. I think it’s equally easy to make friends and to make enemies. Maintaining friendships, quality friendships, requires effort, and usually, if it s a healthy friendship, reciprocal effort. It is possible to preserve a state of enmity without effort. In fact, doing nothing, will help ensure the acrimony festers. Can you love someone who hates you? Jesus tells us that if we only love our friends we are no different to everyone else. He says that in loving our enemies we demonstrate that we understand the love and grace of God. It can be extremely difficult, virtually impossible to love your enemies. Forgiveness is the key. Unless you have been forgiven and have forgiven yourself, you won’t be able to forgive others, and you will always have enemies, and the worst one will be yourself.