And God Said "Love Your Enemy"

You Become The Evil You Fight

“And God said “Love Your Enemy,” and I obeyed him and loved myself.” -Kahlil Gibran

It can be very challenging to respond to the energy of hate with compassion and loving, but that is the only way to overcome hate. The more you fight the evil you see, the more you become the evil you are fighting. The evil you fight will consume you. 

The trap of negativity is to get you to fight it. As soon as you strike out in your righteousness, you are caught in the negative power’s playground and have already lost. You can’t destroy darkness with darkness, you just end up with more darkness. It is only with Light that darkness disappears.

You get to choose where you place your focus. What you focus on you become. If you focus on the Light, you become the Light, and the Light of who you are will shine into the darkness, and the darkness will become illuminated. If you focus on the darkness, you move into darkness, and the darkness grows. The more you hate the evil you perceive in the world, the more the evil grows in you as hate. In order to hate you must become hateful.  

As John-Roger said, “You cannot see anything out in the world that is not in you. So if you see evil, it is in you.” 

It’s against so much of our programming, and the overall thrust of this world, to choose loving in the face of evil. Perhaps the greatest words Jesus spoke were as he was dying, nailed to the cross: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34).  In the midst of being persecuted to the point of death, he overcame the negativity by asking forgiveness for those doing it to him. No punishment. No judgment. Just compassion and forgiveness for their ingnorance, which is the darkness of consciousness.

He said that they didn’t know what they were doing, but they obviously knew what they were doing: they were crucifying the guy who said he was the son of man, and who told people to love God and each other, including their enemies. 

So what was Jesus referring to that they didn’t know? They were ignorant of the error of their actions. They were acting from their own darkness, which is ignorance of the Light. If they knew the Light, then they would recognize the Light in him, and their actions would reflect that awareness. The power of that example is as relevant today as it was when he said it. Time and technology don’t change the nature of the Light and darkness. 

In a practical application, you can have opinions, even strongly held opinions. The question becomes, what do you hold more valuable than your opinions? What if your opinions are wrong? What if your opinions are actually better than others’ opinions? What if your political views lead to better outcomes than others’ views?

Does that mean that those on the other side of the political spectrum are less valuable as people? Does someone being wrong make them less worthy of your love? That can be a hard question to answer. Even if you decide they are less worthy of your love, are you going to be less loving towards them?

If Jesus and the other mystics and prophets had decided that because people were living in ignorance and darkness, that they would not share their Light and love, then we would still be doomed by our sin and ignorance. Being loved in our error and darkness is grace.  To love those parts of ourselves that we have judged as unworthy of love, the unlovable parts of us, is to overcome the darkness within us. To love those who we have judged as unworthy of our love, is to overcome the darkness in the world. 

The positive way to authentically express your views is to be the example of what you believe is good. You have a chance to stand up for greater values rather than fighting against others who you see as wrong. You have an opportunity to hold the value of others as greater than the sum of their actions. 

The idea that people who do horrible and reprehensible things still have a right to a fair trial or humane treatment is to say that we value our principles more than their actions. To do reprehensible things to them, as much as they may deserve it, is to abandon the principles that we hold and is to become like them. We would just be letting their horrible deeds determine our values.

I have experienced what it is like to be demonized and devalued by others. By doing so, it gave them the moral cover to act in ways towards me that would otherwise be difficult to justify. The use of existential arguments often becomes a justification to perpetrate negativity against others.

When one group of people demonizes another group, it is a form of psychic violence which generally results in the physical manifestation of violence. I once heard that to demonize people is to see them through a demon’s eyes. As Kahlil Gibran so simply put it, “To belittle, you have to be little.” And there’s a saying that illustrates this: when an angel sees a pickpocket, they see an angel, but when a pickpocket sees an angel, they see pockets. The way you view others says more about you than it does about them.

Extend respect and caring to those who have neither earned it nor deserve it, because their value is greater than their mistakes.  

Maybe you are smarter than others. If so, educate them, and that’s not done by beating them over the head with how wrong they are. People learn far better when they know you care about them more than you care about being right. As John-Roger used to ask those of us around him: “Would you rather be right, or be loving?” When we chose we wanted to be right, and kept fighting him, he would simply say, “You win.” And walk away. He would actually let us win the argument. What did we win? Nothing. There’s nothing to win, except your own negativity.

It’s okay to let people win even if they are wrong. Let them win so you can focus your energy into the positive direction that you are moving. But you truly have to let them win inside of you, because if you walk away still fighting them inside, then you have lost anyways.

The only response to evil is love. To respond with love you must look through the eyes of love. To look with love is to see the good in all people and things. To see the good is to see as God sees. To act with love and compassion is to do God’s action. And to shine the Light into the darkness is to become who you truly are.

Nat and John-Roger having a laugh. 1997