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LOVE THY ENEMY
One thing I love is the internet. What a fast, effective way of obtaining a wealth of knowledge from all over the world. I mean, where would we be without being able to “Google” all our questions and queries. More often than not I’m able to get the answer to any question in a matter of minutes. And best of all (I’m sure most parents would agree), the internet makes getting information for school projects a breeze. How wonderful is technology?
Occasionally, however, there is the odd question or two that I can’t find the answers to. I have two theories on the reason for this:
1. The answer is somewhere there if I would only take the time to go through the 4,237,695 websites which all contain the words I’m looking for.
2. The situation I’m going through is unique to me which is why no one else has put the answer on the internet.
Well, if the latter is the case, then I guess I’m going to be the first to put some information on the internet regarding some situations which it appears no one else has experienced.
One of my questions is two-fold and stems from the following question I recently asked myself:
Is it possible to wrong someone and then be angry with them for not falling in line with what you’ve done?
I realised, sadly, that the answer to this is ‘yes’, and that, even more sadly, seems to be irrespective of whether or not the wrong-doer is a Christian. That aside, it then raised the two-fold question:
1. How do you forgive someone who’s hurt you?
2. How do you forgive someone who’s caused you an immense amount of pain and continues to hurt you out of anger against you for something they ultimately did?
The second question has more to do with a pain and hurt that can only be caused by someone close to you. Either a spouse, family member, close friend or trusted confidant.
I have personally experience pain caused by someone close to me, a friend I loved dearly, respected and trusted. I trusted her deeply, not only with our friendship, but with my children, whom she looked after when I had the opportunity to go overseas with my mother in 2005. Then came a betrayal which overstepped the lines of friendship, mainly because it involved my ex-husband (don’t get anything wrong here, he was already my ex-husband then). I have often wondered how someone who was such a good person could do what she did, but at the end of the day, when a motive is self-seeking, is any other reason necessary? Someone once said to me that despite what she did and said to me, she’s still actually a good person. While I agree that she may do good things, what she did showed a darker, more brutal side to her. Something I was totally unprepared for in a person I had then considered to have been a true friend.
So can a person be good and yet be unrepentantly malicious to a friend at the same time?
Luke 6:43-45
“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers.”
I accept responsibility in the sense that I chose to be friends with someone who was not only a non-Christian, but a member of a dangerous cult which believes in erroneous teachings about Christianity – that being Mormonism (aka The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints / LDS). While Mormons themselves can be very good, nice people, their beliefs make them completely anti-Christian (and yet, ironically, they call themselves Christians in order to get accepted by mainstream Christianity).
So why should her beliefs then make any difference? For the pure and simple fact that because she is not a child of God, she is not bound to the teachings of the Bible.
There were some very difficult moments during our friendship “break up” and, admittedly, I did occasionally give a verbal jab which gave me immense pleasure at the time (a confession to my humanism), but God never let me get away with it. Many times I offered my apologies (mainly via e-mail) and many times it was thrown back at me.
Just remember, even when we’re not at fault, we are still required to apologise to people in order to bridge a gap and bring peace. However, not all apologies mean that you are admitting that a situation was your fault. Most of the apologies I offered were made for the sake of peace, and to do what was right, not because I was in the wrong. They were also, and more importantly, made to set me free from the bondages of bitterness. That is something that so many people don’t realise. When we forgive, we take away the power from the other person to keep hurting us. That is why God wants us to forgive – for ourselves, and for our own sakes.
I remember waking up on one Saturday morning with God pressing on my heart to go and buy my friend (we’ll keep calling her that for now) a gift. Call it a peace-offering gift, if you will. So I promptly made my way to the Pavilion shopping centre to the nearest Christian shop. Whilst there, an sms-ing “war” began when my ex, along with my friend, were demanding that I give them the address for my new place which I had recently moved into as they wanted to come view it. As I had moved into many places before this one, with my ex showing no concern as to where I’d lived previously, I felt no reason to give into their demands. My home was my comfort zone and I didn’t want the two people who had betrayed me most (from my ex’s side it was actually his second betrayal in my life) to come in a place where I felt safest. There in the shop the tears flowed. I wanted to shake them both, these two people who once loved me, one as a husband and the other as a friend, and ask them was I really such a bad person that they both felt the need to show so much hate towards me? Before I could walk out of that shop, God again pressed on my heart the need to complete what I had gone there to do – buy my friend a gift. Eventually I settled on three small books. One was entitled Love, the other Faith and the third Courage. I gave these books, in a gift bag, to my ex to pass onto my friend. The next time my children came home she had promptly packed them in their clothing bag and returned them to me. I then re-packed the books on their next trip and yet they came back again.
Then one day, when I knew my friend would be collecting my daughter from school to go visit her dad, I met up with her. I told her that I loved her and didn’t want this badness between us. We both cried and hugged and the three books never came back home after that. It was a few days later, however, that my daughter (who was 5 at the time) told me that my friend said that she didn’t believe that I was being sincere when I spoke to her. If only she knew how difficult it was for me to do what I did. But at the end of the day, I was being obedient to what the Holy Spirit laid on my heart to do.
To this day, on the rare occasion when I see my friend with my ex, she won’t look at me unless she has to and will only greet me if I greet her first. As a child of God, the burden has always been on me to put the first step of peace forward, again and again and again. Each time I did, did not make the pain any less, but it did bring me closer to God. Being obedient to Him was more important than my own pain.
Just remember, if you’re the Christian then you’ve got a responsibility which you may not like. It’s not easy to step out of your comfort zone at times like this, but it is very necessary, especially when it’s God who’s told you to do it.
I can now look back and see how He used that situation to shape my character and make me into the person I am today. I could never have done it without His grace to carry me.
If you’re serious about God then you have to be serious about His Word. The most spoken about topic in the Bible is love. If you’re not willing to love others, whether you feel like it or not, then you’re going to have serious problems. God IS love. If you can’t love then you won’t be able to connect with God.
Romans 12:9-14&17
“Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honour one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in application, faithful in prayer. Share with God’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality. Practice hospitality. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse…Do not repay anyone evil for evil.”
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