Six Tips for Loving Your Enemies
You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. —Jesus of Nazareth, quoted in Matthew 5:43-48, NIV
Jesus’s injunction to “love your enemies” closes out the Sermon on the Mount. It could be seen as an extrapolation of the Golden Rule, present in many wisdom traditions: “Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” Don’t return hate for hate, but, beyond that, love—especially when it’s not easy. In our social media age, there are provocateurs who aim to get our goats, enrage us, and waste our time. In the U.S., there’s not nearly enough “content moderation,” and all too often, lies, anger, and hatred can and do go viral, far outpacing facts, reason, and compassion. This parallels what can happen in our own nervous systems. In my book Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks, I called social media our “auxiliary amygdala,” for its ability to fire up our fight-flight-freeze survival brain responses.
When “enemies” and hatred seem to abound, online and in real life, is loving them something we should even aspire to? And, if so, how can we possibly go about it? Adding love and shared humanity to our emotional ecosystem is a responsible way to put the brakes on hatred and the chances for violence that hatred brings.
