Love Your Enemies Even When You Are Capable Of Violence

Jesus' call to "love your enemies" reveals his idea of peace (Luke 6: 27-36). First things first, loving your enemies is not tolerating injustice and discrimination. When you are poor and people do harm to you or are disrespectful to you, you must retort. Your exploiters are not your enemies; they are predators, preying on the vulnerable. If you do not speak out against them, you are promoting injustice.

Take a deeper look at the person who is called forth to love his/her enemies: it is a dominant person; he has possessions, he has money, he has power to give, power to lend, power to bless or curse, he has the power to do good or to do bad, he has the power to pray or not to pray; yet he chooses to let go of his tunic, give, lend, do good, bless, and pray. It is a deliberate choice made by the dominant one.

Stoic wisdom provokingly says, don't call yourself peaceful unless you are capable of violence. If you are not capable of violence, you are not peaceful—you are harmless. Don't mistake the absence of conflict for the presence of peace. Real peace is a choice—not a limitation. We could read the scriptural indication of peace in Isaiah 11 in this light; the wolf/lion shall live with the lamb. It is not that the wolf or lion would lose its power, but shall not use it against the lamb as a choice.

People often take a lot of cruelty and abuse, and even let go of a loan that was given, etc. when dealing with another who is more dominant—that often becomes normal. Here the dominant one accepts a bit of mistreatment and cruelty while dealing with a lesser one. The dominant one, with his access to institutions, systems, and procedures, can easily be violent and demand payment of even the last penny, but lets it go. Gandhi's nonviolence was not a call to perpetuate exploitation and predation, but a call to shun violence though one is capable of it.

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Loving your enemy begins with silencing your enemies within you: fear, mistrust, prejudices, etc. Loving your enemies, or people who appear to be enemies, is a process; it is a skill we must develop. In an interview on Gen Z and their work culture, Simon Sinek asked Esther Perel, a Belgian-American psychotherapist known for her work on human relationships: What is the no. 1 relationship skill Gen Z must master as they take up their first job? Esther Perel, without hesitation, answered, "talking to strangers," and she continued explaining that in the world of smartphones, you don't notice people around you, you don't talk to people on the plane, you don't talk to people standing in a queue with you, you don't talk to people waiting for coffee. Talking to strangers is improvisation, spontaneity, serendipity, surprise, and an active engagement with the unknown. Talking to strangers builds trust. Trust is an active engagement with the unknown, others, strangers. Any first job, or entering a new job, is like moving to a new country: one must look around, engage in conversations with strangers.

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