Wednesday, 07 January 2009

• love thy enemies

  how do you get from forgiving someone to loving them?

  i don't know.

  i know that forgiveness doesn't necessarily mean you allow someone back into your life or that you trust the person again.  but what i am trying to wrap my brain around is the loving your enemies gig.

  there are a small handful, four, possibly, people in the peripheral of my world that i would actually consider enemies, in a sense.  people that have hit the core nerve of hurt in my life. 

  how do you have resolve in a situation where the "closure", so to speak is in their control?  i've extended the olive branch and truly in these situations feel like i have done what i can to bring peace. but nothing in return but gossip/manipulation/being ignored/ostracizing, etc. from their end.

  i made a resolution this year to love my enemies...or, more so, to have resolve with situations i have no control over.  this is extremely difficult for a control freak. 

  geoff and i read this yesterday:

  The Great Omission

  by Dallas Willard

  
  Living under the governance of heaven frees and empowers us to love as God loves. But outside the safety and sufficiency of heaven's rule, we are too frightened and angry to really love others, or even ourselves, and so we arrange our dreary substitutes. A contemporary wording of Jesus' comparison of God's kind of love, agapē, and what normally passes for love might be:

  "What's so great if you love those who love you? Terrorists do that! If that's all your 'love' amounts to, God certainly is not involved. Or suppose you are friendly to 'our kind of people.' So is the Mafia!" (Matt. 5:46-47).

  
  

  Now reflect: Has your heart gone out in generous blessing to someone who has insulted or humiliated you? Can you work without thought of gain for the well-being of someone who openly despises you, maybe has told you to drop dead? Are you enthusiastically pulling for the success of someone competing with you for favor, position, or financial gain?
  

  A much-used doormat says: "Welcome, friends!" Could yours also genuinely welcome enemies? When you lend a dress, a stereo, a car, or some tools or books, are you able to release them with no hope of seeing them again as Luke 6:35 suggests we should?

   

  um, fuck you, Dallas Willard. 

  seriously.

  how can i tackle this?  i am in the process of figuring this out.  it's like going from focusing on the hurt in me to focusing on the intent for good for someone that has caused that hurt.  it makes zero sense in my brain and heart but every sense in the God world.  how can i get closer to God if there is a part of me that is devastated and despises?

   

  i am really struggling with these people on the peripheral.  i don't want good things for them.  honesty.  i want them to go away.  move.  not be friends with my friends.  childish.  but it's how i am feeling.  i know bitterness will do nothing but rot me away from the inside.  ugh.

   

  in process....

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