FROM THE PULPIT: LOVE YOU ENEMIES? GET REAL!

The little church in central Texas was my first Pastorate. It was a big day. I was learning to use my first computer. A teenager in our Youth Group was visiting us and I invited her to try it. She typed, "Brother Brian is the best preacher in the whole world!"

To say I was shocked would be an understatement. I had no idea she was such a discerning student of preaching! I decided to print this accolade and bronze it or something. But the computer would not print. I tried everything. She suggested this and then that. We were sitting there, stumped, when her eyes lit up. "I know!" she said excitedly. "Maybe it knows I'm lying!"

Christianity is a real faith and teaches us to love real people. People who are sometimes a delight and sometimes a bit too honest. But Jesus teaches us to do something that does not seem possible. He teaches us to love our enemies. Be fair to enemies? Sure. Be kind? Understandable. But to love an enemy? Is that possible?

In Matthew 5:43-48, Jesus says we are to love our enemies. There are many kinds of love. There is a natural love, which loves the lovely.

The Old Testament moved us one step beyond that to covenant love. Israel was commanded to love their neighbors, not because of what he or she had done for them, but simply because they were a part of the same faith. It was an advance over natural love. Many marriages suffer because they cannot get beyond natural love to covenant love.

But Jesus raised the standard even higher. Christian love loves the world. It loves the good, the bad, those in the faith and those without. How do we do this?

Loving Actions: We can love an enemy with our actions. A surgeon might perform life-saving surgery on a person she despises. Regardless of the emotion, the act was one of love. But that does not seem the full extent of what Jesus meant when he said, "Love your enemies."

Loving Thoughts: This step is more difficult, yet we can choose to think in a kind way about difficult persons. Jesus is teaching this when he tells us to "Pray for those who persecute you." We can also love an enemy with our thoughts by thinking about his or her potential in Christ; loving who they could be, if they were to give themselves to the Lord. But these two criteria alone could still leave us with a furious, hateful heart towards the real person. Is there a way to love an enemy with our emotions?

Loving Emotions: Our usual concept of love is an emotional love. It is the pleasurable feeling of love we have for others. But isn't it a contradiction in terms to think of having emotional love for an enemy? No, it isn't. Love is not a single emotion, like pleasure. Love also hurts. Love grieves. A Christian can have a loving emotion for an enemy -- grief. We can have pain because he or she chose to hurt us, themselves and their God.

So, loving our enemies is possible because love is not simply affection or pleasure. Love can do right. Love can hope. Love can feel grief. Christ's love can pray for a change of heart.

The Southern Baptist missions magazine, "Commission," carried a story about war-torn Ireland (May 1989, pg. 3). A Baptist woman in Belfast got a call from a Catholic friend whose husband had just been shot in front of her eyes by Protestant terrorists.

"Please come to me," she begged. "I need to know there are good Protestants."

After the funeral, when everyone had left, the Catholic woman and her three year old daughter knelt at the little girl's bed to pray. Suddenly, the three-year-old said, "God, did you know there was two men who came the other day to shoot my Daddy dead?"

What would you say if you were her? How would you finish her prayer? "God bring them to justice?" or "God, destroy them?"

She prayed, "God, could you make those men into good men?"

I find myself shocked at her love, humbled by her wisdom and hopeful for her world. That's what a real God is doing in a real, painful world -- making bad into good. If a three-year-old can love her enemies and pray for them, perhaps we can too.