Love Your Enemies

[lostnfound]

People I know who have never wished ill of anyone are so angry at Trump that the news that he has COVID is being met with uncharacteristic inhumanity.

I can’t say that I’m immune to this. He has ruined so much that is good in this country, and millions have suffered because of him, and so many dead. It feels like just retribution, and a potential end to a miserable chapter in modern history.

I’m trying to take a step back though and ask myself, what does it mean that this man can engender so much hatred? How are we supposed to react?

Trump seems custom-designed to bring out the worst in us, spiritually. I found myself being sad, not over the situation that he is facing, but over some loss of innocence. The command in the religion that I grew up with that says “Love Your Enemies” is one of my favorite. My spirituality is kin with the adorable Margaret Wise Brown children’s book “The Little Island”, wherein a kitten learns a great secret from a fish: that the little island is connected to all the other islands and all the other land, under the sea. I got chills every time I read this book to my little one, because it felt so true.

Do I hate him? Hell yes. I am moved by the pain of those who hate him as the man who was responsible for the loss of their parent or husband or friend. My sympathy is with all those who have been hurt by his actions.

No one has been a bigger test of my belief in my favorite message and spiritual practice, though: Love your enemies. The best ending to the story is always a kind of redemption, even when it seems no redemption is possible. It is good and important to hold on to one’s own innocence.

[Atticus]

1. Thanks for a thoughtful post. I do not disagree with you, but freely concede

that you are a better person than I am.

I wish him no ill, but I am not at all sympathetic about the fate he has earned by his personal cruelty to "the little people". I do not---will not---"love" him.

[lostnfound]

4. Maybe sympathy isn't even part of "love your enemies"

Not a better person, I’m just not liking the abandonment of my own “better self”. It’s way to easy to feel vindictive.

Perhaps sympathy isn’t required to “love your enemies”. The best thing that could happen to trump would be for him to truly repent, to become grounded, to become truthful.

Frankly there’d be nothing better for the country than him standing up on a podium (after losing the election) and confessing to all that he has done. His base needs to come to terms with the cult-like following of a false idol, with his deception, and with the hate that has grown in their own hearts.

It’s better if we don’t let hate be nurtured in our own.

[Ponietz]

2. Jesus rioted amidst the money changers

That’s the kind of love I have.

[lostnfound]

3. Yes, I was thinking of the same story when I wrote my OP.

Perhaps righteous anger is a form of love. The anger at the money changers was love for those who were being taken advantage of, by defending them from the predatory money-changers.

[Ponietz]

7. Justice and love, to me, are indistinguishable

[No Vested Interest]

5. It's not unusual for one who causes evil to be injured or sickened by their own doing.

Think of the drunken driver who becomes injured and maimed by an accident he caused.
Or the thief shot and sometimes killed by the homeowner.

It's not especially hard for us to take the emotion out of the situation and realize on a rational basis that the perpetrator did in fact cause his/her own injury and ensuing problem, but that the result for him does not have to be tit-for-tat.

That is why so many of us oppose the death penalty.
We are not seeking vindictive revenge, even though the perpetrator patently did wrong.
We do not seek "an eye for an eye".

"Love" your enemies might be a little tough to conjure up, but surely we can wish them no harm and hope for future redemption.

[lostnfound]

10. Feeling sorrow at human moral condition

Part of loving ones enemies is recognizing that even abhorrent behavior is part of the human experience.
Whether watching Greek tragedies, or reading of people who “fall from grace”, seeing people destroy themselves through a fatal flaw is sad to watch. A good man with a fatal flaw can be understood, but this man who is incapable of acts of kindness or empathy seems beyond redemption.

To see any part of humanity as beyond redemption is against my core feelings of faith. “I have reason to believe we all will be received in the Graceland”, sings Paul Simon. There was a scene in Twin Peaks when Agent Cooper is holding the murderer BOB / Leland’s head in his lap as he lay dying, and there is “rain” falling down on both of them from the sprinkler heads in the jail cell. Agent Cooper is telling him to go toward the light as he dies. There’s so much ugliness in the human condition.

I don’t feel sorry for trump. But I feel sorrow for the human moral condition. We are all connected, and the society which nurtures such a person into a position of power is one which is broken in a fundamental way.

[No Vested Interest]

11. I agree with your thoughts and feelings on this human tragedy.

I have concluded that some people have inborn personality traits that are anti-social and even with the best of parenting and surroundings will have a bad outcome.
We know that some people have physical traits which make life difficult and even unsustainable indefinitely.

Having given birth to and raised four humans who, despite same parents and environment, obviously received some slightly different genetic material in the dice-toss that is human conception, I believe strongly the same concept holds in personality traits.
It is one of the mysteries and problems of our human condition.

You are also correct that it is up to society - the majority being relatively healthy psychologically- to recognize the errant individual and limit the power given.

Thanks for your insight.

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

6. Wonder if "Love Your Neighbor As Yourself" is even on a Republicans radar?

Yet, we get chastised to Love your Enemies?

[lostnfound]

8. No chastising

Just conversation among friends

[JustFiveMoreMinutes]

9. It is what it is.

[uriel1972]

12. I care because I am what I am....

I don't expect others to be so...