First of all, the difference between any given sin of yours, mine, and that of the enemy you face, are details.
They have in common that we both started out as “perfect” babies, ostensibly with “original sin” which means we all have the capacity to sin against love.
Each kid has a certain DNA, development, and environment. While we can make general categorical statements that predict the collective statistics pretty closely at times, for what choices that person will make and what it will do and become, it is still individual.
That said, all combinations of nature and nurture create every sort of behavior, thought, and attitude in humans, and each one has a body but is unique from each other. Except Abby and Brittany Hensel, who share one. So they share some of their body, but have individual minds and hearts.
I get angry and wish a person would get hurt. A man hurts my loved one and I wish him to suffer for his actions. Or maybe I wish he would be locked up, or executed. Does it matter if I pulled the trigger? Yes. One kills a person, one doesn’t. But they both mean that I have anger. And anger is a concept in itself that we can identify and try to gain a closer honesty with ourselves.
So now a person keys my car for some reason. Or is rude to me. Or shoots my dog. I don’t know why. The person may be evil. They may have been hallucinating and thought they were saving you from an attack. The fact is there is damage. So what do we do?
Well if we are afraid for our safety, we are allowed to defend ourselves and according to the church, we may value our own lives above that of an aggressor.
But now there was this guy I was mad at. I could write a book on all the ways I could cleverly describe how thoroughly wrong and unreasonable this person was. He had cause great emotional and tangible damage to people I cared about. I got a book of insults and read some, and then read the most insulting but true description of him I could muster. That gave me some feeling of at least rhetorical command of the situation. I was calling it as I saw it. But then luckily I tore it up because I never wanted them to go anywhere except to treat my mind to the thoughts it wanted to taste, so that it could go ahead and get over them.
The results surprised me. I had put them down so badly, that I felt pity for them as victims of my rhetoric. I felt a little pride at having put them down, but then saw them as very vulnerable – even though they have done me damage I could cut them to the quick. Then I imagined how they were going to explain to God how they had done me. Suddenly I felt very sad because no matter what they have done, to imagine them standing before their Maker and giving them an account. Then my imagination imagined their heads exploding like on Raiders of the Lost Ark.
All of this was just running in my head after I read the letter and then thought, “how could they explain this God.”
Feeling pity for the perpetrators, for how it must feel to explain this to God, I wished for them not to feel badly for what they’ve done. I don’t want revenge. I don’t want to see my lust for revenge be disguised as “justice” as if I could judge another like the wicked servant who would not forgive after being forgiven.
So one step toward loving my enemy, was to feel pity for him, instead of anger and resentment or whatever, even for the exact same behavior.
I could write a lot more but I need a “work break” toward what stuff I’m committed to outside of CAF.
Sometimes I remember there is a world outside CAF.
, I know we’re taught to remember how Jesus Himself treated sinners. But most if not all of these sinners whose lives were touched by Him, they desired to turn and do right. If someone hates God, and is smug about it, etc., how can one possibly see the face of Jesus in him or her? (Just a note: I don’t really know anyone like this, so I’m not discreetly asking for advice, I just simply wonder.)
Our relationship with God is so special that Pope Francis even likens gossip to stabbing Christ in the back. It doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong, if you share the faults of your neighbor with others without objectively valid reasons, then you are stabbing Christ, your creator, in the back.
