Loving Thy Enemies

I truly hated writing this, but you might find it helpful

Love thy neighbor, not just the friendly ones. Sounds beautiful when we hear it in church or read it in a sacred text. But the moment we try to apply it to real life, things become more complicated. Because loving people becomes difficult the moment those people have hurt us.

I thought about this recently while watching the movie: Nuremberg. The events surrounding the war not too far from the realities of the Nigerian civil war I must add. The particular story, of course, centers on justice after the horrors of the Nazi regime. Yet the character who stayed with me the most was not one of the main figures arguing law or politics. It was Howie.

Howie recounts what the Nazis did to his family. They broke his family apart. They killed his parents. The kind of loss that leaves a wound far deeper than words can easily describe.

During the trials, he had a plan. A simple but powerful one. At the end, he intended to tell Julius Streicher that he himself was part of the very people Streicher had spent his life trying to eliminate.

But when the moment came, he did not say it.

He saw Streicher at his lowest point; stripped of power, stripped of dignity, standing before judgment. And in that moment, Howie chose not to deliver the final blow. Instead, he allowed him a strange kind of relief: the relief of never knowing.

That moment stayed with me long after the film ended.

Because many of us know what it means to be deeply offended. Sometimes the people who hurt us are not villains from history books. Sometimes they are classmates. Colleagues. Strangers who decided, for reasons we may never fully understand, that we were somehow beneath them.

Bullying, humiliation, cruelty; these things leave marks. Some people carry scars they have never fully processed. In many cases those experiences quietly shape how we see the world and how we see other people.

Years later, life sometimes creates strange reversals.

You may meet those same people again. Only this time the balance of power has changed. You may now be the one in the stronger position.

And that is when the real question appears.

Do you remind them of what they did?

Do you avenge your younger self?

Or do you let it go and move on?

These questions can keep a person awake at night. The mind replays old memories, weighing them like evidence before a court. Justice pulls in one direction. Mercy pulls in another.

Scripture speaks directly into that tension.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ says something radical: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Not merely tolerate them. Not simply ignore them. Love them.

Islam carries a similar teaching. The Qur’an says in Surah Fussilat (41:34): “Repel evil with that which is better, and the one between whom and you was enmity may become as though he were a devoted friend.”

Both traditions recognize the same difficult truth: forgiveness is not weakness. It is discipline.

But forgiveness can feel unreasonable when we remember what human beings are capable of doing to one another.

History shows us clearly.

Wars. Cruelty. Betrayal. Violence.

The Nazis did not appear out of nowhere. They were ordinary people who made choices that led to unimaginable evil.

And even today, in quieter and smaller ways, we still see people choosing cruelty over kindness, power over mercy, revenge over reconciliation, personal interests over the collective good (especially with elections not too far off).

R. G. Collingwood wrote something unsettling:

“The only clue to what man can do is what man has done.”

History tells us exactly what we are capable of.

Which makes forgiveness seem almost irrational.

“There’s nothing new under the sun”, the bible also mentions.

And yet, despite all of this, both faith and conscience keep pointing us back to the same uncomfortable instruction: forgive.

Which leaves us with a final question.

History tells us what human beings can do to one another.

And it is not always kind.

So if history shows us so clearly what people are capable of…

why then should we still forgive?

Stay Jiggy.

PS: enjoy the song linked to this post and picture I took on a stroll

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