Hello my friends,

Anyone else need a break from breaking news? It feels like every week brings with it yet another "unprecedented" event.

With this being the case, I wanted to take a little break with you and ponder what it means to actually love our enemies according to the words of Jesus. If you are anything like me, you've often wondered, "how is it even possible to love my enemies?" Especially in these chaotic, "unprecedented times," I think thinking through this topic together could be really beneficial.

But first, here are some resources that have me thinking this week:

​-Why Facts Don't Change Our Minds by James Clear. I really enjoyed Clear's book called Atomic Habits and I found this short article on his website to also be very interesting, to say the least.

-Claims About Project 2025 need context, by Verifythis.com. If you don't have the time to read through the over 900 page document of Project 2025 on the Heritage Foundation's website, I found this link to Verifythis, a fact-checking website, to be very helpful to keep in your back pocket. Just like with anything these days, information and words can get twisted around and miss the heart of what's going on. Understanding the exact language and plans-of-action will better prepare us for conversing about it knowledgeably with others. Notice the kind of culture Project 2025 promotes by its policies. That is the heart behind the document.

​-Grace, by CityAlight If you are anything like me, it can be hard to listen to modern worship music. Not just because of some of the messages they convey, but because of the hurt associated with them in a church setting. This album is just a small Anglican community simply and beautifully singing together. I would recommend listening to the song "Grace" first. I found its words and sound so healing for my heart. I was moved to tears. I hope you find it comforting and healing too.

Okay onto today's content.

Is It Even Possible To Love Our Enemies?

In my newsletter last week, I made a comparison between Calvinism and Wesleyanism. This was meant to simply be a comparison in order to highlight how a particular strain of Calvinism was being misused, namely double predestination and TULIP theology, both of which influence the theology of dominionism we are seeing in political circles today.

While doing this, I wasn’t as clear as I strive to be in my writing. Because of this comparison, several of you let me know that it came across as if I was saying that Wesleyanism is better than Calvinism, adding to the “us vs them” mentality of our time. I intended to simply show theological origins so that we could understand the roots of what we are seeing, not to add to tribalism. For that, I am sorry. That’s the last thing I want to do. I’ll strive to be more clear and concise in the future.

This occurrence actually informed what I wanted to write about this week. Specifically how Jesus calls his followers to love their enemies. Based on your responses and our conversations this last week, I think many of you might feel the same as I do: deeply weary from constantly being told to see others as my enemy. My heart is craving a path forward together rather than more justification to be even more upset with others.

In this weariness of mine, I turned to the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:43-48, where he says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 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. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

This is a rich passage, but I just want to focus on one area today. An areas that I have constantly thought to myself, “That isn’t even possible” as I read it. An area that has challenged me and changed how I think about what Jesus is saying here once I learned more about it. The words, "love your enemies."

Love Your Enemies.

I had always thought this was virtually an impossible ask, namely because of how I thought about enemies. I saw my enemies as those who were against me. Those who showed hostility towards me and may even wish to do me harm. This often made me believe that I needed to allow others to walk all over me and even see healthy emotional boundaries as not being “loving” to my enemy. However, looking at the Greek changed all this for me.

The Greek word Matthew uses for enemy here is the word, “echthros,” which is an adjective that means “hated, hostile, or enemy.” In the context of this passage, it is combined with the genitive of the person to whom one is hostile. So, it isn’t about the people who see themselves as your enemy. It is specifically about the people who you yourself see as your enemy.

For me, this changed so much about how I read this call to love my enemies.

I don’t know about you, but I have people who see themselves as my enemy, yet I don’t see them as my enemy. Especially people who I counted as close relationships in my life who, for one reason or another, began to really dislike me because of my public writings. It hurt so much because they saw themselves as my enemy, but I still saw them as my neighbor. They had hostility towards me, but I didn’t have any nor want any towards them. I'm sure many of you have experienced similar situations in these divided times.

So, folks like this wouldn't be our enemy, because we still see them as our neighbor.

I think what Jesus is actually getting at here is to love those whom I myself am hostile towards. Those whom I am tempted to even hate because of their beliefs or actions in the world. Those whom I believe have caused injustice towards others. My enemy is the one whom I hate and am hostile towards myself.

This really helped to narrow down both the definition of enemy for me and who I might think and feel that way about today.

Did you have any faces come to mind when you read that description of enemy? Who are the people you have the most hostility towards? The people you are most tempted to hate?

The Greek word for love Matthew uses here makes this an even greater challenge. It is “agapaó,” which means to love someone in a way that you wish them well and care for their well-being.

What Jesus is doing here is inviting us to examine and confront the hatred and hostility in our own hearts rather than the hostility and hatred in the hearts of others. Jesus is essentially challenging us to see how we see ourselves as being someone’s enemy rather than being their neighbor.

This adds needed clarification between the two groups of people in verses 43 and 44. We are called to love the people we are tempted to be hostile towards and then pray for those who are hostile towards us. This allows us to make a proactive effort towards melting our own hostility towards others and even caring for them while maintaining good and healthy boundaries as we pray for those who are hostile towards us.

The Rain Falls On The Just and the Unjust

For me this clarification causes the rest of the passage to make a lot more sense. When we carry hostility in our hearts towards others, that cannot help but make us biased in our love and care for others. Jesus points out that this biased love is not the character trait of those who would be children of God. Even nonbelievers act that same way, so what would set a child of God apart?

Jesus elaborates that a child acts like God, who is the one who gives both good rain and needed sunshine—a big deal in an agricultural-based society—on both the good and the evil, the righteous and the unrighteous. God loves and cares even for God’s own enemies and Jesus calls God’s children to do the same.

This hit me between the eyes because it is this exact kind of biased love and uncharitable spirit that causes me to get the most angry when I see it from others. So wouldn’t it be hypocritical of me to have biased love and an uncharitable spirit toward others I see as my enemy?

To put it simply, I think the challenge in this for me is to not allow my desire to oppose and dismantle things like prejudice and hate in this world to cause me to become prejudiced and hateful towards others myself. Such a difficult challenge.

Unfortunately, this is far too easy to fall into in our time.

Media: The Rage Machine

I think one of our biggest challenges right now as Christians in America is to not pigeonhole individuals into the amorphous ideological movements we oppose. We need to distinguish between the two.

You see, every day we are inundated with narratives of why we should be hostile toward the “other side.”

Social media and other news outlets on both sides of the political spectrum frame things and twist words in just the right way to keep their ratings up as well as our animosity towards who? Those groups of people we believe are our enemies!

We then cannot help but take these narratives we have been given online into the real world throughout our day. When we see an individual who appears to fit into that group on the “other side” of our own, our hostility is activated and our biases seem confirmed. Perhaps even without ever knowing anything else about the individual.

The reality is though that individuals are far more complex and complicated than any broad strokes narrative. Individuals never deserve to just be reduced to the collection of things we oppose in a particular group. Individuals never deserve to be reduced to the anger we have for large political or religious movements.

When you discover that your neighbor sees a political issue differently than you do, it can be so easy and tempting to simply assume that they must believe in everything else you oppose about “other side.”

But we all know how awful that feels when other people make those kinds of assumptions about us, right? That simply because we see one issue more conservatively or liberally than they do, we must therefore be conservative or liberal about everything else in their minds. When they see one thing about us and reduce our entire perspective of the world and even our identity to that one thing it can feel really dismissive and hurtful.

No one likes having that happen to them. No one deserves to be treated that way and it takes a lot of effort and patience to not do that to others, especially in times like these.

I have felt for a long time that the media we consume stokes large and scary narratives about movements and groups in our society, which on some level ring true, but these narratives also have a tendency to convince us that we know exactly what someone believes simply by their outward affiliation with an issue or a group. It can give us a false sense of reality and individuals.

We look at the outward appearance while God looks at our hearts. Having real, heart-to-heart relationships with people is crucial to actually knowing what they think, believe, and feel.

I’m simply writing this because I also struggle with this temptation. It is easier and feels so much safer to put people into groups. Groups we agree with and groups we oppose so that we can feel like we are able to better navigate our current moment. Especially as an election draws near.

But people are more complicated than that. As one with a public platform, I know how hurtful it is when people do this to me. They read one post or one article and reduce my entire personhood to their hostility and disagreement. Sometimes they will even send terrible things to my wife, which hurts and angers me even more.

I simply don’t want to do that to others. I believe when we all do this to each other, we simply get nowhere.

I think this is when Paul’s words in Ephesians 6:12 become vitally important: “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

So many of the issues we are seeing right now are not about the individuals we encounter in the real world, but they are about those in positions of power, those in authority and the ideologies they spread to divide and control us, and the policies and practices they put in place that cause systemic, real-world harm to others. When we take our fight against these things out on the individuals in our lives, we are not only missing the forest for the trees, but we are also causing unnecessary harm and deeper division.

As things continue to feel intense and we see large movements of people making consequential decisions, I hope we can be mindful and intentional enough to not reduce the individuals around us to the identity of a single movement we disagree with. But rather choosing love, to listen and to find common ground while refusing to let fear divide us.

After The Culture Wars

I have believed for a long time that the culture wars have already been won. Christian nationalism is more about not accepting the reality that these wars are over and the culture has moved on than it is about anything else. Christian nationalism doesn’t speak for the majority of Christians in the United States and it certainly doesn’t speak for the majority of Americans. If it did, it wouldn’t be so frantic and it wouldn't need to rely on using legislation, authoritarians, and positions of authority to force its own way. It could just rely on the majority to vote.

So then let's look to the future. Let’s say Christian nationalism suffers great losses locally and nationally in November. How will we then respond to those who feel like they have lost their country and their desired vision for the world? Will we respond with gloating and hostility or the kind of love Jesus calls us to?

Difficult questions I know, but I honestly can’t help of think about Joseph’s story in Genesis chapters 37-50. He is hated and mistreated by his brothers, who end up leaving him for dead only to be found and pressed into slavery by others. He then goes through a lot of horrible struggles before rising in prominence, becoming the most powerful person in all of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself.

Then due to the famine in the land of Israel, all of Joseph’s brothers find themselves in a desperate situation, needing to go to Egypt to beg for help. They end up with an audience with Joseph himself, even though they didn’t know it was him, probably because they had all concluded that he had died long ago after they disregarded him so callously.

Yet, how did Joseph respond now holding all the power to do with them as he pleased? He could laugh at them and turn them away to starve or even have them all tortured and executed for how they treated him in the past. However, he chose to show compassion, love, and care. He chose love rather than hostility.

I think this is my desire to keep center focus in the days ahead, no matter how political powers shift in our time. The focus that it really isn’t about having power. It is about how we use the power we have that matters. It is about allowing our use of power to be dictated by love, even towards our enemies, rather than hostility and hate.

For isn't that the very thing we are asking Christian nationalism to do as well?

This is the challenge from Jesus I find myself wrestling with today.