response 13

• Christians are so wimpy. Turn the other cheek? Love your enemy? If you let people walk all over you then you are not being healthy, you are being codependent.

Let’s think about this carefully. First of all, what do these concepts about “loving your enemy” and “turning the other cheek” mean? Here are the pertinent Bible verses.

Matthew 5:38-39; 43-44 (NLT)  
    "You have heard that the law of Moses says, 'If an eye is injured, injure the eye of the person who did it. If a tooth gets knocked out, knock out the tooth of the person who did it.' [39] But I say, don't resist an evil person! If you are slapped on the right cheek, turn the other, too.

    [43] "You have heard that the law of Moses says, 'Love your neighbor' and hate your enemy. [44] But I say, love your enemies! Pray for those who persecute you!

These verses occur within the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is describing what life looks like for an individual follower of Jesus. It is a process, beginning with dealing with anger. Jesus addresses anger, contempt, lust, divorce, and verbal manipulation before he gets to “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemy.”

These descriptions of life in the Kingdom of God now are in the specific order they are on purpose, according to Dallas Willard. I become the kind of person who can respond to these situations as Jesus would respond if he were me. You don’t just instantly begin to love your enemy until you learn to deal with anger and contempt, for instance.

The Sermon on the Mount deals with the individual Christian. This is not a prescription for how the church community automatically acts, and is certainly not a description of how society is to act. Without the transformational power of Jesus in your life, it is not possible to live like this in a healthy way. God gives government to protect. It is not the Christian’s place to legislate to empty all prisons and to disband the military.

As it is up to me individually, I can become the kind of person who voluntarily will not take revenge or retaliate against someone who has wronged me. To be merciful by choice is not being a wimp, it is being in control of my actions.

As far as when someone else is wronged, I will take the appropriate steps to defend the innocent and seek justice. One can work against the evil actions of others without employing a life of revenge. Justice is not retaliation.

To “love” my enemy is to want what God wants for them. God wants us to repent and take responsibility for our sin. If my enemy is filled with hate, I want them to repent and transformed by Jesus. This has nothing to do with a warm, fuzzy feeling toward them. For instance, when militant Islamists strike out in hatred and kill innocent people on purpose, I may experience a sadness of the type of warped teaching they received from their parents and others as children that would result in such evil behavior. This doesn’t mean I excuse them.  

There isn’t a human being on the planet earth who hasn’t dealt with garbage and injustice in their lives. Yet, the vast majority of us don’t strike out with the evil intent of trying to kill the innocent in order to further our cause. This evil is based on bad thinking and the willingness to act upon the bad thinking.

I am not filled with hatred for the militant Islamist. I pray they will see the error of their ways and be transformed by Jesus. I also pray that  justice will be done.