I struggle with this teaching. In theory, it does not seem so hard: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” says Jesus. It costs nothing to say a prayer for my enemies, although such prayers tend to ask for their enlightenment and not simply for their well-being. Loving them, however, becomes more and more difficult the closer I examine what Christ means when speaking of love. Jesus rejects the tit-for-tat justice of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, asking me to accept injury and insult with love—and not just love but a full embracing of the one causing the injury or insult. “… if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles.”
Some see this as a way to shame the enemy into becoming your friend, but I think Jesus goes beyond this into a space I have difficulty following him into. He acknowledges that such love is unlikely to be returned, that more abuse will follow. What he asks is that I apply his concept of unconditional love of neighbor to even the most extreme of situations, fully knowing that doing so leaves me more vulnerable and more likely to be injured.
As deeply committed to Christ as I am, I still cannot fully internalize this teaching. Nor, apparently can most Christian denominations—only a few, like the Society of Friends (the Quakers), put this form of extreme pacifism into practice. The rest, like the Episcopal Church, are “against” war as a concept but concede that some wars are justified at some level. Bless you, my son, and pass the ammo.
Herein, I think, can be found one of the essential contradictions of Western culture, one that has not yet and may never be fully reconciled. “Do not resist one who is evil,” says Jesus, yet I find that I cannot do as he commands. To my shame, I also do not know if my reluctance is based on fear of the consequences—the further abuse Jesus admits will follow turning the other cheek—or on a more dangerous prideful desire to “do good” by rescuing myself and the world from evil.
