Love your enemy? You gotta be kidding, right!
When belittled or attacked, I don’t want to love; I want to strike back – I mean, retaliate. But mostly I don’t . . . at least outwardly. Instead, I harbor an intense desire to. The more virulent any real or even imagined retaliation becomes, the distinction between me and the offender soon disappears. I’m left with an attitude. I feed the attitude by going over the insult in my mind a hundred different ways, all leaving me, for about ten seconds, gloriously triumphant by having had the last word. It’s typically a pyrrhic victory. In thirty seconds I’m in a stew.
The more I feed my attitude, the less I can tell who’s the good guy or who’s the bad guy. This is why, from the earliest records documenting the practices of spiritual wisdom, loving your enemy was the signature challenge and the way to live fully. Michele Obama put it this way: “When they go low, we go high.”
As an abstraction, the teaching ‘love you enemy’ has been admired, but few really think its possible. Many consider ‘love your enemy’ as fanciful, a sentiment for wusses and the ineffectual, not for the strong and powerful. However, as infrequently practiced as it may be, when it is practiced, it changes everything. Martin Luther King, Jr. and those working with him changed our world.
I recently heard a discussion between Buddhist teacher, Sharon Salzberg and Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman about the subject of anger and loving one’s enemies. Loving your enemy is not taught as such in Buddhist psychology although it is certainly implied. The teaching is more popularly associated with Christianity, but it precedes Christianity by centuries. As wise as the two spiritual leaders are, they acknowledge that living loving-kindness is sustained by regular practice, and not unlike recovery, is accomplished a day at a time.
In my own experience, while knowing the teaching is integral to Christianity, I’ve found little that’s practical to guide me in how to exercise that kind of piety. Praying harder doesn’t do it. Probably because when I do pray, it’s beseeching the Lord to make the disagreeable person irking me to vanish from my life – or his life – or for my bad feeling to go way. To love someone you viscerally despise can seem impossible. Emotions are what they are and we can’t just wish them away. In Buddhism, there’s extensive instruction in how one can develop skills in practicing loving kindness in the face of disagreeable circumstances. In some ways, for me, the discovery of Buddhist practices is helping make me a better and more functional Christian.
Jesus had only four years to teach, not time enough to develop an extensive body of practices. Buddha had a lifetime. The vision of a gentle spirit and the nuts and bolts of developing one are there from both and for us to learn.
Loving my enemy is born out of compassion, and nurtured by discipline.
As I listened to Thurman talk about his own struggle with anger I identified with him more than with Salzburg who is temperamentally more sanguine. Thurman describes himself as having a temper and is easily provoked. I get that.
The journey of loving others begins with loving self. This is different from narcissism. To put it another way, the first step when provoked is to become aware of just what’s going on inside ourselves. We look deeply into the content of our reactions, see them for what they are: feelings that will soon dissipate if left alone and not fed. By acknowledging the suffering we’ve experienced in being human we are able to let go. We can be kinder with ourselves and consequently with those who may well be enemies. The angriest or most vengeful people I know are least aware of their own inner lives. Whatever vexes them is always what someone else has said or done. For such, there is a deep need to hold on to anger. I think it’s because anger is less threatening than acknowledging vulnerability or hurt. Being angry is less scary than feeling afraid.
Recently, congressman John Lewis of Georgia, who knows the meaning of vulnerability, questioned the legitimacy of Trump’s election. He delivered it as opinion not as a rant. Trump retaliated by dismissing Lewis’s iconic work in civil rights as “all talk, talk, talk, no action.” What’s interesting to note here is how easily anger distorts reality. Lewis, like King, brought nobility and dignity to political life. Lewis, by being realistic and clear- headed about his vulnerabilities, embraced his weakness and discovered the strengths that helped change an entire society.
It’s instructive to note how Lewis and others in early civil rights marches assessed their vulnerability realistically and prepared to deal with it. In part, their preparation was turning spiritual truths into actions and taking ‘love your enemy’ from being a pious abstraction into a potent force for truth.
I had not known until recently that potential marchers were trained intensively for their mission. In one description volunteers learned nonviolence, civil disobedience, redemptive suffering, and Christian love . . . in the practices of nonviolent direct action as a means of challenging Jim Crow. They staged sit‐ins in which “store owners” and hecklers screamed racial epithets at the students performing the role of demonstrator. Mock antagonists blew cigarette smoke in their faces, pulled their hair, pushed them around, and shoved them to the floor. The workshops emphasized that the demonstrators’ suffering would be redemptive, but they did not minimize the suffering.
How have I been doing with my enemies these days? Depends on the day. When I catch myself feeding my attitude, sometimes I have the awareness to gently let my vengeful feelings go. At other times I overfeed them. Then I start all over again, working to let be. It’s comforting to know I don’t have to get it right the first time. If I fail I can always start over again.
Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.
Anne Worthington says
This is a very timely essay, especially for those of us who dislike Trump.