The Enemy of Enemies Is Love

In the Sermon on the Mount, Christ instructed us to love our enemies. There are many obvious reasons why the Lord would ask us to do this, but I'd like to point out a few that may seem less obvious. When we have an enemy, we have someone we can point to who is obviously so much worse than we are. We can feel good about ourselves, even if we are not living the best life we can, because at least we aren't as bad as our enemies. We can abandon any sense of responsibility for trying to make the world a better place because we have an enemy and thus an excuse as to why we shouldn't even bother trying to fix anything because it's the enemy's responsibility to change their ways first. Even worse, we can use the enemy as an excuse not just to procrastinate our self improvement, but to accelerate our rebellion. If we are going to defeat our enemy, then we can justify any means with that end in mind. We can tell ourselves that we have to go low (but never as low as our enemy) and meet them on their turf, stoop to their level, fight fire with fire. But, suppose we tried to love our enemy? What would that mean? We'd have to see things from their point of view, understand where they're coming from, walk a mile in their shoes. We'd look for ways to help them crawl out of the pit they're in, and then we'd help them stand up straight and dust themselves off. We would expect more, not less of them. We would hope and pray for their success instead of their downfall. We'd make the first move and apologize first and allow them to apologize as well. When we love our enemies, we demand better not only of our enemies but also of ourselves.