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Title: Love Your Enemies
Design: multicoloured characters with white legend on black
Make: (c) Red Letter 9
Seriously?
I bought this shirt in a Christian Bookshop in Salt Lake City (and before you ask, it was a Christian bookshop, not one run by the Latter Day Saints!) because it made me laugh. PacMan, of course, does love his enemies, when they turn blue and edible. Mmm. Yummy, yummy blue ghosties.
And of course it links two of the greatest heroes in the history of humanity: PacMan and Jesus. It even has the Bible verse in tiny print in case you’re in any doubt over who made the ludicrous suggestion to ‘Love your enemies’. And I use the word ‘ludicrous’ genuinely. If it wasn’t Jesus who said it, you wouldn’t think it was the smartest suggestion in the world. They’re your enemies. You don’t love your enemies, do you? It’s pretty much the definition of the word ‘enemy’ – person I don’t love.
Except that Jesus said you should.
Fortunately, I find it a piece of cake to love my enemies. I can tick that box with a clear conscience. There’s no one in my life I would class as an enemy, so in the words of Aleksandr the Meerkat: “Shimples!”
Except, of course, it isn’t as simple as that. If it was, this would be the shortest blog post yet, and you’d be thinking ‘Wow, that guy’s holy.’ And smug.
Because while it’s true that I don’t have any enemies in the way that, say, Spider-Man has the Green Goblin, or Sydney Bristow has Arvin Sloane, or humanity has the Cylons, there are people it is hard to love. If Jesus said ‘Love the people you find irritating…’ it would be a case of ‘Whoah, there.’
Does Jesus really mean I have to love that obstructive or obnoxious co-worker? Or the boring person who always collars me in church to have a tedious conversation I can’t escape from? Or the neighbour who gets agitated at the slightest provocation? Or the cold caller? Or the Jehovah’s Witness who knocks on my door during dinner? Or the local youths who hang around the bus shelter intimidating passers-by just by looking vaguely menacing?
Seriously, I’m meant to love all those people?
Yes. And it gets worse… ‘Love’ isn’t just a case of ‘live and let live’, tolerating those people who annoy us, and biting back the swearwords that rise unbidden in our minds (maybe that just happens to me). Love is more than toleration. Love is more than letting people live. Love is more than just biting our tongue.
Love is proactive, and dynamic, and understanding, and compassionate, and comforting, and inclusive, and warm, and life-affirming, and all those things that, honestly, I’m rubbish at being.
I mean that. I’m rubbish at loving people. I’m an introvert and sometimes I wished I lived in a cave and never had to see anyone. There’s an old joke: I love the human race, it’s people I can’t stand. Loving my enemies would be easier if I could avoid all social interaction.
But then I would miss out. Because loving your enemies isn’t about having warm mushy feelings for people instead of being wound up by them. Loving your enemies is a conscious decision you take. It can be an effort of the will. To choose, repeatedly, to love when someone lets you down, over-reacts, wastes your time, says something spiteful, or fails to keep their promises, takes more than feelings. Love – as a relationship not an emotion – is something you have to work hard at sometimes.
And that willingness to love changes you. Being willing to seek the best for someone – not force what you think is best upon them – isn’t easy. It’s not meant to be easy. If it was easy and came to us naturally, Jesus would never have had to tell us to do it.
But what about if someone hurts you, or maligns you, or seems determined to be your enemy? What can you do, then?
I don’t want to belittle this. I know what it’s like. When I was in high school a girl who was in several of my classes bullied me badly. The only reason I enjoyed French class was because she was in a different set and so I got some respite from her name-calling. She mobilised a gang of her girl friends to mercilessly humiliate me at break times, threatening me with phoney complaints to teachers, or spreading rumours about me to other classmates (many of whom ‘helpfully’ told me what was being said behind my back).
And years on some of that stuff still hurts, to be honest. It’s hard to think of her name or her sidekicks and not instantly think of words like ‘bitch’ or ‘harpy’. But there are good reasons for me not to hate her. For one, hanging onto hatred like that will only hurt me, not her. I imagine she’s forgotten about the way she terrorised me. She won’t know about my lingering hate. My negative resentment won’t affect her at all, unless you think bad vibes will have some sort of psychic effect on her. Which I don't.
So, what's the solution? A clue is in Jesus' words. He follows up the statement to ‘Love your enemies’ with the words “and pray for those who persecute you.” That’s not stupid wishful thinking. It works.
Now, when someone winds me up, and I realise I’m heading on that way to holding it against them, I try to pray for them. Sometimes, if I’m in a bad mood, I pray that God will smite them for me. But I’m careful with that. Because, unlike playing PacMan, ‘loving your enemies’ isn’t about destroying your enemies by gobbling them up.
It’s about somehow destroying the thing that makes you enemies – the hate. And you can only destroy the hate if you are both willing to love, and that means you need to take the step of wilfully choosing to love too.
And maybe being the first one to take that step.
Seriously?
I bought this shirt in a Christian Bookshop in Salt Lake City (and before you ask, it was a Christian bookshop, not one run by the Latter Day Saints!) because it made me laugh. PacMan, of course, does love his enemies, when they turn blue and edible. Mmm. Yummy, yummy blue ghosties.
And of course it links two of the greatest heroes in the history of humanity: PacMan and Jesus. It even has the Bible verse in tiny print in case you’re in any doubt over who made the ludicrous suggestion to ‘Love your enemies’. And I use the word ‘ludicrous’ genuinely. If it wasn’t Jesus who said it, you wouldn’t think it was the smartest suggestion in the world. They’re your enemies. You don’t love your enemies, do you? It’s pretty much the definition of the word ‘enemy’ – person I don’t love.
Except that Jesus said you should.
Fortunately, I find it a piece of cake to love my enemies. I can tick that box with a clear conscience. There’s no one in my life I would class as an enemy, so in the words of Aleksandr the Meerkat: “Shimples!”
Except, of course, it isn’t as simple as that. If it was, this would be the shortest blog post yet, and you’d be thinking ‘Wow, that guy’s holy.’ And smug.
Because while it’s true that I don’t have any enemies in the way that, say, Spider-Man has the Green Goblin, or Sydney Bristow has Arvin Sloane, or humanity has the Cylons, there are people it is hard to love. If Jesus said ‘Love the people you find irritating…’ it would be a case of ‘Whoah, there.’
Does Jesus really mean I have to love that obstructive or obnoxious co-worker? Or the boring person who always collars me in church to have a tedious conversation I can’t escape from? Or the neighbour who gets agitated at the slightest provocation? Or the cold caller? Or the Jehovah’s Witness who knocks on my door during dinner? Or the local youths who hang around the bus shelter intimidating passers-by just by looking vaguely menacing?
Seriously, I’m meant to love all those people?
Yes. And it gets worse… ‘Love’ isn’t just a case of ‘live and let live’, tolerating those people who annoy us, and biting back the swearwords that rise unbidden in our minds (maybe that just happens to me). Love is more than toleration. Love is more than letting people live. Love is more than just biting our tongue.
Love is proactive, and dynamic, and understanding, and compassionate, and comforting, and inclusive, and warm, and life-affirming, and all those things that, honestly, I’m rubbish at being.
I mean that. I’m rubbish at loving people. I’m an introvert and sometimes I wished I lived in a cave and never had to see anyone. There’s an old joke: I love the human race, it’s people I can’t stand. Loving my enemies would be easier if I could avoid all social interaction.
But then I would miss out. Because loving your enemies isn’t about having warm mushy feelings for people instead of being wound up by them. Loving your enemies is a conscious decision you take. It can be an effort of the will. To choose, repeatedly, to love when someone lets you down, over-reacts, wastes your time, says something spiteful, or fails to keep their promises, takes more than feelings. Love – as a relationship not an emotion – is something you have to work hard at sometimes.
And that willingness to love changes you. Being willing to seek the best for someone – not force what you think is best upon them – isn’t easy. It’s not meant to be easy. If it was easy and came to us naturally, Jesus would never have had to tell us to do it.
But what about if someone hurts you, or maligns you, or seems determined to be your enemy? What can you do, then?
I don’t want to belittle this. I know what it’s like. When I was in high school a girl who was in several of my classes bullied me badly. The only reason I enjoyed French class was because she was in a different set and so I got some respite from her name-calling. She mobilised a gang of her girl friends to mercilessly humiliate me at break times, threatening me with phoney complaints to teachers, or spreading rumours about me to other classmates (many of whom ‘helpfully’ told me what was being said behind my back).
And years on some of that stuff still hurts, to be honest. It’s hard to think of her name or her sidekicks and not instantly think of words like ‘bitch’ or ‘harpy’. But there are good reasons for me not to hate her. For one, hanging onto hatred like that will only hurt me, not her. I imagine she’s forgotten about the way she terrorised me. She won’t know about my lingering hate. My negative resentment won’t affect her at all, unless you think bad vibes will have some sort of psychic effect on her. Which I don't.
So, what's the solution? A clue is in Jesus' words. He follows up the statement to ‘Love your enemies’ with the words “and pray for those who persecute you.” That’s not stupid wishful thinking. It works.
Now, when someone winds me up, and I realise I’m heading on that way to holding it against them, I try to pray for them. Sometimes, if I’m in a bad mood, I pray that God will smite them for me. But I’m careful with that. Because, unlike playing PacMan, ‘loving your enemies’ isn’t about destroying your enemies by gobbling them up.
It’s about somehow destroying the thing that makes you enemies – the hate. And you can only destroy the hate if you are both willing to love, and that means you need to take the step of wilfully choosing to love too.
And maybe being the first one to take that step.
At what store did you purchase it?
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