More reflections on loving enemies

Still reflecting on Bishop Nikolai's prayer. Why do we love our enemies?

I used to take the train to school in London, and a group of girls from another school took the same train. For some reason one day they decided to start picking on me, and I went through a period of perhaps a couple of weeks when I felt quite uncomfortable as I travelled home, trying to ignore their taunting. I guess I was about 13 or 14 at the time. I asked my mum for advice, and she suggested that I treat them really nicely - the next time you see them, she said, give them a big smile. So that's what I did: as the ringleader and I got off the train at the same stop, I turned to her and grinned. She was utterly confused. I remember she even said something like "What? What are you doing?". I never had any trouble from them after that. It wasn't that I had shamed them through being kind; I had freaked them out by smiling, and they couldn't understand what was going on. They probably thought I knew something they didn't. Because I refused to play by their rules; because I refused to react the way they wanted me to, the situation was turned on its head. Well done mum.

This isn't exactly an example of holy love for one's enemies, and I do believe that Jesus genuinely wants us to cultivate love for those who are 'against' us, in whatever way. But I do wonder whether there's also an element of subversion in 'love your enemy'; perhaps it's not simply a masochistic willingness to suffer without complaint, but also a cunning way of wrong-footing those who mean to do us wrong.

Comments

Making the best of a bad situation

This morning, instead of going to church, I put this note through all the houses on our street. Despite being an extrovert, I have a tendency toward social anxiety. Despite being an evangelist, I really hate door knocking. As I approached each door, I noticed lots of “no junk mail” stickers and felt briefly worried. One sticker said “no unaddressed mail”. Putting notes through the doors of people I’d never met - even though we live within a few dozen metres of each other - felt risky. Even worse - some people were outside their houses. I actually had to talk to them! “Don’t worry, I won’t come too close,” was my opening gambit. As someone who suffered from OCD as a young adult, fear of contaminating others is quite a familiar sensation. We Brits have the reputation of being standoffish and maybe a bit antisocial, and the virus is not helping in this regard. And yet, I live in the commuter belt; many of us on our street go off to London on trains every morning and come home late

Halloween

It's that magical time of year again - that one night when my small neighbours knock on my door asking for sweeties. This year, I'm properly prepared: I have two pumpkins (I wanted five, but decided to be thrifty), a big tub of sweets and a tube of 100 glow sticks. The sweets are my concession to popular demand; the glow sticks are an attempt to represent light in darkness (a symbolism which will doubtless be lost on the kids). I'm seeing the pumpkin as my main opportunity to communicate something of my Christian faith to my neighbours. One year, while I was at theological college, Halloween fell on a Sunday. The new housing estate church I was assigned to met in a church hall on Sunday afternoons and many of the congregation were unaccompanied children. I googled 'Christian pumpkin carvings' and guess what - there are a lot of ideas out there, America being a country which is big on Halloween and big on Christianity too. I decided to carve a simple fish and c

Do not fear

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash When I was 15 years old there was a particularly unpleasant murder which was splashed all over the news. The culprits were identified, given long prison sentences and, many years later, new identities upon their release. I remember watching news footage of the defendants being brought to trial in a prison van, angry crowds screaming abuse as it drove past. My mother's perspective on this was interesting. "We all have darkness inside us," she explained. "It's easier to scream at it in someone else than to face our own." Today is All Hallows' Eve: for the past week, pumpkins, skeletons, witches and ghosts have loomed at us out of shop windows, from supermarket shelves and strung up as decorations outside homes. Tonight it reaches its peak as many of us, adults and children, dress up in the things we most fear. Axe murderers, which come to mind whenever we're alone in the house and hear a creak on the stai

Coffee Theology

Search This Blog