On Love
Jesus entered the temple courts and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. Matthew 21:12-13
Quaker meetings are frequently quiet. In unprogrammed meetings, each individual Friend prays and meditates, and speaks as Spirit moves them. When Spirit moves, you feel it. Sometimes it is like watching the Pentecostal, holy fire move through the meeting, fueled by faith and conviction.
We spoke today on love. “Love your enemies as yourself,” one Friend quoted, “and pray for those who persecute you.” This is a cornerstone of the New Testament, but I admit it: I have some difficulty here. Jesus was no doormat, yet it sometimes seems as though this verse is a call to be one. How does one love a rapist, or a murderer, or someone who embezzled millions of dollars from barely-scraping-by investors? Or maybe the fundamental question is, what is love, anyway, and what does love look like?
War is sometimes held up as antithetical to love. For me, this becomes an even trickier point. Quakers despise war, and despite my background, I have no quarrel with that. To quote J.R.R. Tolkien’s Faramir in the Two Towers,
“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.” We are not called to be Alexander the Great and his Macedonian troops, who conquered large swaths of land, killed millions, and raped more, solely for the glory and honor of Alexander the Great and Macedon. That does not mean we are not called, sometimes, to fight.
I cannot truly love my neighbor unless I am willing to defend them. I also do not love my enemies if I do not hold them accountable. Hopefully, this does not involve all out war. And yet - the question must always be asked. If my enemy is Andrew Jackson, ordering the removal of the Cherokee people from their ancestral homelands to the Midwest, what does loving my neighbor, and loving my enemy, look like?
Here, pragmatic considerations must also occur. A full-on rebellion against the United States government would have cost many lives and likely hastened the demise of the remaining Cherokee people. Political action may have been possible, or maybe even U.S. military troops refusing to obey the order. Perhaps the only practical recourse would have been resistance through worship (praying against the evil), resistance through political action (protest and spreading awareness in Washington, DC), popular resistance (spurred through media coverage, such as it was at the time) and individual acts of resistance: for example, feeding the Cherokee people as they were marched past.
And Andrew Jackson? What does loving Andrew Jackson look like? Is it forgiving him? Is it remaining angry and praying that God send justice? Christianity.com makes an interesting point here:
Yes, we might be entirely the victim. And yes, praying for them might mean praying for their repentance, and it might mean praying for the exposure of their sin. But even in these, we are not praying vindictively, and we are praying that the Lord will bless them.
A blessing can mean exposure of the evil they do. A blessing can mean that they see, deeply, what they have done and what harm they have caused, and repent. I think it important that this does not deny the pain they caused or harm they did. We need not even stop with prayer: anyone who reads investigative journalism, or listens to their podcasts, or listens to a survivor testify, recognizes the power of putting in the light what had been shielded by darkness. We love victims by listening and supporting them. Their abusers, we love by holding them accountable - and yes, this may mean jail time, or, as reluctant as we may be to do so, choosing to fight their abusers or oppressors.
Love your enemy. God has no hands or feet save ours. Hope has two beautiful daughters; their names are Anger and Courage. Anger at the way things are, and Courage to see that they do not remain as they are. Three quotes which, to me, encompass the Christian faith, the call to remain loving, but to remember that love is a verb.