Why You Should Love Your Enemies
My favorite quote by Jesus is “Whatsoever you did to the least of my brothers and sisters, you did to me”. It’s very easy to love someone who’s always good to you. But as a true follower of God, that’s not enough. To really prove that you’re a loving person, it’s necessary to love your enemies. People who are rude to you, people who are annoying, or even people who were verbally or physically abusive to you.
What do I mean by love? Well you should definitely not treat everyone with the cuddly “romantic love” that you treat your wife. Love is simply: a respect for every living being, a sincere wish for everyone to be happy and prosper. No feelings of harm, revenge or negativity towards anyone.
Everyone is a child of God; so an enlightened person would treat everyone equally, without comparing. Comparing people is as unnecessary as saying my feet are better than my face, or my index finger is better than my pinkie. Everyone, whether they are more talented, smarter, stronger, ruder, clumsier.... Every person has a unique, valuable role to play in this world, and they should be respected.
I’m not saying it’s a good idea to treat everyone with as much time and love as your best friend or your wife. I do believe in Dunbar’s number, which states that any one person can only have a maximum of 5 close friends, 15 good friends, and a 100 or so people you just know (mailman, cashier, landlord etc). Just like in politics, when I say treat everyone equally, I mean an equality of opportunity, not an equality of outcome. Regardless of race, gender, what gossip you heard about such-and-such person, go into your first interaction with anyone nonjudgmentally, and look at a good deal of their words and actions before deciding whether to get closer or distance yourself from that person.
They say no matter how evil someone is, if you know the hidden history of that person, you would never feel ill-will towards anyone. Hitler, Mao, racists, thieves, rapists, murderers. These are evil people, yet what made them evil were due to a lot of the struggles that we have also faced. Verbal or physical abuse in family or school, a desire for money and power, feelings of being rejected and not being good enough, ego and trying to feel important in life. They’ve probably faced those struggles in a larger degree, and are you confident that if you were raised in those similar circumstances, you wouldn’t turn out evil too?
Also, if you trust someone who disrespects you with love, their evil stops with them. But if you react hatefully, the evil continues with you. To quote Gandhi: “Eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind!”
Which is why it’s necessary to love everyone unconditionally, whether they’re good or bad. To forgive someone even if they’ve hurt others and never said sorry. Out of all the world religions, Christianity most emphasizes this concept of loving even the worst kinds of people. But really all the great religions agree that this unconditional love is important. Like in Buddhism where Buddhists are taught loving kindness meditation. We’re taught to direct loving phrases, first to people we love, then to people we feel neutral towards, and finally to people we hate.
Looking at many of the protests done by feminists and Black Lives Matter, they’ve been ineffective in America because they are protesting out of hate instead of love. Many of the protesters would act rudely, use harsh language, and at times even erupt into violence. And though none of the leaders ever condone violence, you do see many members and reporters trying to make excuses for the stealing and rioting. They tell us that we should be “understanding” of the people who looted those stores because Black people have been oppressed and mistreated all their lives.
But the point is no matter how oppressed or discriminated you are, it doesn’t ever justify violence or any harmful behavior or thoughts. The appropriate response is not to “seek understanding,” but to condemn these people on your side. Many political activists are reluctant to do that, which is why I don’t think Martin Luther King would support Black Lives Matter if he were alive today.
The greatest political activists in history, like Gandhi and Martin Luther King, always preach a love for their enemies and are proponents of non-violence. They were able to convince thousands of people to not only protest and risk imprisonment, but when police or antiprotesters attacked them, to never strike back but instead take the hit, because it takes far more courage to take a hit than to hit back. And that’s why even though the civil rights protests in the 60s had far less people than the protests we have today, they were more effective because they displayed a greater degree of love that moved people’s hearts, affected laws, and turned the tides of history.
People often glorify the “big” events of history – the wars, the protests, the imprisonments. But it’s the mundane day-to-day acts of kindness done by seemingly ordinary people, which creates the foundation of love that leads to historical moments. Being imprisoned or being part of a protest is nothing compared to the way you treat people daily. Whether or not you’re a person who loves their enemies, could mean the difference between the world being destroyed, and world peace.
In the documentary “The Last Dalai Lama?”, they showed one of the Dalai Lama’s followers, a Tibetan Monk who was imprisoned. The Monk was talking about his captors and torturers and told the interviewer: “I’m in danger.”
The Interviewer asked “In danger of what?”
The Monk replied “I’m in danger.... of losing compassion.”