I never imagined
that I would (finally) find my response to Pat Robertson’s controversial (and unfortunate) statement on the earthquake in Haiti in my reflection on the life and writings
of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Having spent the week reading bitter, angry
comments and posts about Robertson, I’ve wondered how public attacks in the
blogosphere track with our call to address concerns with one another directly
in love rather than stir controversy and (if the hashtags and retweets are any indication) drive blog traffic. 

There was plenty of public rebuke from professing followers of Jesus calling for
Robertson to shut up or go away, but few people reflected on how brothers and sisters in Christ are meant to behave when a high-profile member of the broader tribe says or
does something that we find offensive or harmful. Sure, Jesus turned over the tables in the temple, but I don’t think that story was meant to be a “get-out-jail-free” card for self-righteous indignation. As the posts piled up and people made haste to differentiate Pat’s “Christian brand” from their own, I saw more of a Survivor response than a than a Jesus one. It seems like many of us would rather cast difficult Christians off the island than
find a way to challenge them directly, love them, mitigate damage done by them and, ultimately, forgive them–whether we like it or not. 

Then I came across this
sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A wise preacher, an amazing leader, an advocate of change and a facilitator of peace. Thank you Dr. King, for lighting the way to the kind of woman I aspire to become…

Loving Your Enemies.
by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Let us be practical and ask
the question. How do we love our enemies?

First, 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. It is impossible even to begin the act of loving
one’s enemies without the prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over
again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us. It is also
necessary to realize that the forgiving act must always be initiated by the
person who has been wronged, the victim of some great hurt, the recipient of
some tortuous injustice, the absorber of some terrible act of oppression. The
wrongdoer may request forgiveness. He may come to himself, and, like the
prodigal son, move up some dusty road, his heart palpitating with the desire
for forgiveness. But only the injured neighbor, the loving father back home,
can really pour out the warm waters of forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not mean
ignoring what has been done or putting a false label on an evil act. It means,
rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship.
Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere necessary for a fresh start
and a new beginning. It is the lifting of a burden or the canceling of a debt.
The words “I will forgive you, but I’ll never forget what you’ve
done” never explain the real nature of forgiveness. Certainly one can
never forget, if that means erasing it totally from his mind. But when we
forgive, we forget in the sense that the evil deed is no longer a mental block
impeding a new relationship. Likewise, we can never say, “I will forgive
you, but I won’t have anything further to do with you.” Forgiveness means
reconciliation, a coming together again.

Without this, no man can
love his enemies. The degree to which we are able to forgive determines the
degree to which we are able to love our enemies.

Second, we must recognize
that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbor, the thing that hurts, never quite
expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst
enemy. Each of us has something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically
divided against ourselves. A persistent civil war rages within all of our
lives. Something within us causes us to lament with Ovid, the Latin poet,
“I see and approve the better things, but follow worse,” or to agree
with Plato that human personality is like a charioteer having two headstrong
horses, each wanting to go in a different direction, or to repeat with the
Apostle Paul, “The good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would
not, that I do.”

This simply means that there
is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we
discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the
surface, beneath. the impulsive evil deed, we see within our enemy-neighbor a
measure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of his acts are
not quite representative of all that he is. We see him in a new light. We
recognize that his hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and
misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God’s image is ineffably etched
in being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad
and that they are not beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love.

Third, we must not seek to
defeat or humiliate the enemy but to win his friendship and understanding. At
times we are able to humiliate our worst enemy. Inevitably, his weak moments
come and we are able to thrust in his side the spear of defeat. But this we
must not do. Every word and deed must contribute to an understanding with the
enemy and release those vast reservoirs of goodwill which have been blocked by
impenetrable walls of hate.

Let us move now from the
practical how to the theoretical why: Why should we love our enemies? The first
reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding
deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out
darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do
that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multi#
plies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

So when Jesus says
“Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately
inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world
that we must love our enemies-or else? The chain reaction of evil-hate
begetting hate, wars producing more wars-must be broken, or we shall be plunged
into the dark abyss of annihilation.

Another reason why we must
love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts the personality.
Mindful that hate is an evil and dangerous force, we too often think of what it
does to the person hated. This is understandable, for hate brings irreparable
damage to its victims. We have seen its ugly consequences in the ignominious
deaths brought to six million Jews by hate-obsessed madman named Hitler, in the
unspeakable violence inflicted upon Negroes by bloodthirsty mobs, in the dark
horrors of war, and in the terrible indignities and injustices perpetrated
against millions of God’s children by unconscionable oppressors.

But there is another side
which we must never overlook. Hate is just as injurious to the person who
hates. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away
its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It
causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to
confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

A third reason why we should
love our enemies is that love is the only force capable of transforming an
enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we
get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys
and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms
with redemptive power.

 

This sermon was delivered
at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, at Christmas, 1957.
Martin Luther King wrote it while in jail far committing nonviolent civil
disobedience during the Montgomery bus boycott. (Retrieved January 18, 2010 from
http://www.salsa.net/peace/conv/8weekconv4-2.html)