Matthew 5:43-48
Love Your Enemies
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
God is LOVE...This is a part of the everlasting Miracle and Mystery that He is...God LOVES humanity...God sent His Son to earth to teach us to love our enemies...He told His Disciples in one of His las commands to love one another as He LOVES us...By loving one another everyone will know that we are His disciples, if you love one another...By loving one another we are showing others that we are His Disciples - and the nonbeliever sees this action of ours and how we are treating others...And we know it is difficult because Jesus' Teachings about love and forgiveness are not done often enough...If these Teachings were easy they would be happening more and more each and everyday...After all, He does have many followers...
Dr. Martin Luther King knew the importance of loving our enemies and loving our neighbors...He knew if there is a way that everyone loves each of our neighbors the world would be a much better place...Dr. King said these things about love: “Love is the greatest force in the universe...It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos...He who loves is a participant in the Being of God.”..."Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into friend."..."I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality...That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant."...“Yes, it is love that will save our world and our civilization, love even for enemies.”..."Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only Light can do that...Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."...“A man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation...The foundation of such a method is love.”... “We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive...He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”...“In some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.”...“Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve...You don’t have to have a college degree to serve...You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve...You only need a heart full of grace...A soul generated by love.”..."Nonviolence is absolute commitment to the way of love...Love is not emotional bash; it is not empty sentimentalism...It is the active outpouring of one’s whole being into the being of another."...“We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice...Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity...Leaders who can subject their particular egos to the pressing urgencies of the great cause of freedom...a time like this demands great leaders.”...
Jesus teachings are Ideal Teachings...They are for the betterment of the world...But His Teachings are not easy...So some people do not try them not because the results are necessary for the world to be in harmony...But they are not followed because they are most difficult and are left not being practiced...And we become in our minds divided over His Teachings in the sense, that we find the difficulty of the nature of sin and temptation in the earthly body and mind...I think Dr. King touches on this in his next teaching on love...
Dr. King adds this about love: In order to love the enemy neighbor we must recognize that the negative deed of the enemy does not represent all that the individual is...His evil deed does not represent his whole being...If we look at ourselves hard enough, and if we look at all men hard enough, we see a strange dichotomy, a disturbing schizophrenia...We are divided against ourselves, split up so to speak...There is something within all of us which causes us to cry out with Ovid the Latin poet, “I see and approve the better things of life, but the evil things I do.”...There is something within all of us that causes us to agree with Plato that “the human personality is like a charioteer with two headstrong horses each wanting to go in different directions.”...There is something within all of us that causes us to cry out with St. Augustine in his Confessions from time to time, “LORD, make me pure, but not yet.”...Or we find ourselves crying out with the Apostle Paul, “The good that I would I do not, and the evil that I would not that I do.”...Or we cry out with Carlyle that “there are depths in man which go down to the lowest hell and heights which reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of Him, everlasting miracle and mystery that He is.”...