{"id":236,"date":"2010-01-18T01:42:50","date_gmt":"2010-01-18T01:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flirtingwithfaith\/2010\/01\/ive-been-thinking-a-lot.html"},"modified":"2010-01-18T01:42:50","modified_gmt":"2010-01-18T01:42:50","slug":"ive-been-thinking-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2010\/01\/ive-been-thinking-a-lot.html","title":{"rendered":"Pat Robertson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and What it Means to Love Our Enemies"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n


<\/font><\/p>\n

I never imagined
\nthat I would (finally) find my response to Pat Robertson’s controversial (and unfortunate) statement on the earthquake in Haiti<\/a> in my reflection on the life and writings
\nof Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr<\/a>. Having spent the week reading bitter, angry
\ncomments and posts about Robertson, I’ve wondered how public attacks in the
\nblogosphere track with our call to address concerns with one another directly
\nin love rather than stir controversy and (if the hashtags and retweets are any indication) drive blog traffic. <\/span><\/p>\n

There was plenty of public rebuke from professing followers of Jesus calling for
\nRobertson to shut up or go away, but few people reflected on how brothers and sisters in Christ are meant to behave when a high-profile member of the broader tribe says or
\ndoes something that we find offensive or harmful. Sure, Jesus turned over the tables in the temple, but I don’t think that story was meant to be a “get-out-jail-free” card for self-righteous indignation. As the posts piled up and people made haste to differentiate Pat’s “Christian brand” from their own, I saw more of a Survivor response than a than a Jesus one. It seems like many of us would rather cast difficult Christians off the island than
\nfind a way to challenge them directly, love them, mitigate damage done by them and, ultimately, forgive them–whether we like it or not. <\/span><\/p>\n

Then I came across this
\nsermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A wise preacher, an amazing leader, an advocate of change and a facilitator of peace. Thank you Dr. King, for lighting the way to the kind of woman I aspire to become…<\/span><\/p>\n


<\/font><\/p>\n

Loving Your Enemies.
by Martin Luther King, Jr.<\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Let us be practical and ask
\nthe question. How do we love our enemies?<\/span><\/p>\n

First, we must develop and
\nmaintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is
\ndevoid of the power to love. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving
\none’s enemies without the prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over
\nagain, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also
\nnecessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the
\nperson who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of
\nsome tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression. The
\nwrongdoer may request forgiveness. He may come to himself, and, like the
\nprodigal son, move up some dusty road, his heart palpitating with the desire
\nfor forgiveness. But only the injured neighbor, the loving father back home,
\ncan really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.<\/span><\/p>\n

Forgiveness does not mean
\nignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means,
\nrather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.
\nForgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start
\nand a new beginning. It is the lifting of a burden or the canceling of a debt.
\nThe words “I will forgive you, but I’ll never forget what you’ve
\ndone” never explain the real nature of forgiveness. Certainly one can
\nnever forget, if that means erasing it totally from his mind. But when we
\nforgive, we forget in the sense that the evil deed is no longer a mental block
\nimpeding a new relationship. Likewise, we can never say, “I will forgive
\nyou, but I won’t have anything further to do with you.” Forgiveness means
\nreconciliation, a coming together again.<\/span><\/p>\n

Without this, no man can
\nlove his enemies. The degree to which we are able to forgive determines the
\ndegree to which we are able to love our enemies.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second, we must recognize
\nthat the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite
\nexpresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst
\nenemy. Each of us has something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically
\ndivided against ourselves. A persistent civil war rages within all of our
\nlives. Something within us causes us to lament with Ovid, the Latin poet,
\n“I see and approve the better things, but follow worse,” or to agree
\nwith Plato that human personality is like a charioteer having two headstrong
\nhorses, each wanting to go in a different direction, or to repeat with the
\nApostle Paul, “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would
\nnot, that I do.”<\/span><\/p>\n

This simply means that there
\nis some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we
\ndiscover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the
\nsurface, beneath. the impulsive evil deed, we see within our enemy-neighbor a
\nmeasure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of his acts are
\nnot quite representative of all that he is. We see him in a new light. We
\nrecognize that his hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and
\nmisunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God’s image is ineffably etched
\nin being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad
\nand that they are not beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love.<\/span><\/p>\n

Third, we must not seek to
\ndefeat or humiliate the enemy but to win his friendship and understanding. At
\ntimes we are able to humiliate our worst enemy. Inevitably, his weak moments
\ncome and we are able to thrust in his side the spear of defeat. But this we
\nmust not do. Every word and deed must contribute to an understanding with the
\nenemy and release those vast reservoirs of goodwill which have been blocked by
\nimpenetrable walls of hate.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let us move now from the
\npractical how to the theoretical why: Why should we love our enemies? The first
\nreason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding
\ndeeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out
\ndarkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do
\nthat. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multi#
\nplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.<\/span><\/p>\n

So when Jesus says
\n“Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately
\ninescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world
\nthat we must love our enemies-or else? The chain reaction of evil-hate
\nbegetting hate, wars producing more wars-must be broken, or we shall be plunged
\ninto the dark abyss of annihilation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another reason why we must
\nlove our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality.
\nMindful that hate is an evil and dangerous force, we too often think of what it
\ndoes to the person hated. This is understandable, for hate brings irreparable
\ndamage to its victims. We have seen its ugly consequences in the ignominious
\ndeaths brought to six million Jews by hate-obsessed madman named Hitler, in the
\nunspeakable violence inflicted upon Negroes by bloodthirsty mobs, in the dark
\nhorrors of war, and in the terrible indignities and injustices perpetrated
\nagainst millions of God’s children by unconscionable oppressors.<\/span><\/p>\n

But there is another side
\nwhich we must never overlook. Hate is just as injurious to the person who
\nhates. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away
\nits vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It
\ncauses him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to
\nconfuse the true with the false and the false with the true.<\/span><\/p>\n

A third reason why we should
\nlove our enemies is that love is the only force capable of transforming an
\nenemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we
\nget rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys
\nand tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms
\nwith redemptive power.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

This sermon was delivered
\nat the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, at Christmas, 1957.
\nMartin Luther King wrote it while in jail far committing nonviolent civil
\ndisobedience during the Montgomery bus boycott.<\/span><\/i> (Retrieved January 18, 2010 from
\nhttp:\/\/www.salsa.net\/peace\/conv\/8weekconv4-2.html)<\/span><\/p>\n


\n<\/span><\/h1>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

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I never imagined that I would (finally) find my response to Pat Robertson’s controversial (and unfortunate) statement on the earthquake in Haiti in my reflection on the life and writings of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Having spent the week reading bitter, angry comments and posts about Robertson, I’ve wondered how public attacks in the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spiritual-growth"],"yoast_head":"\nPat Robertson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and What it Means to Love Our Enemies - Flirting with Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flirtingwithfaith\/2010\/01\/ive-been-thinking-a-lot.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pat Robertson, Martin Luther King, Jr. and What it Means to Love Our Enemies - 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