With these thoughts weighing on my mind, I absently turned to my schoolwork and began reading. My assignment for today? Martin Luther King's sermon from Strength to Love, entitled "Loving your Enemies." The timeless words of Dr. King offer a serious consideration of the severity and gravity of evil, but also proclaim a more powerful alternative to hate and destruction, one that can transform our hearts and our world--love.
“First, we must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. It is impossible to even begin the act of loving one’s enemies without the prior acceptance of the necessity, over and over again, of forgiving those who inflict evil and injury upon us.”
“Forgiveness does not mean ignoring what has been dome or putting a false label on an evil act...It means, rather, that the evil act no longer remains as a barrier to the relationship. Forgiveness is a catalyst creating the atmosphere for a fresh start and a new beginning. It is the lifting of a burden or the cancelling of a debt…when we forgive, we forget in the sense that the evil deed is no longer a mental block impeding a new relationship.”
"We must recognize that the evil deed of the enemy-neighbour, the thing that hurts, never quite expresses all that he is. An element of goodness may be found even in our worst enemy...This simply means that there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies…we recognize that this hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know that God’s image is ineffably etched in his being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad and that they are not beyond the reach of God’s redemptive love.”
“We must not seek to defeat or humiliate the enemy but to win his friendship and understanding.”
“An overflowing love which seeks nothing in return, agape is the love of God operating in the human heart. At this level we love men not because we like them, nor because their ways appeal to us, nor even because they possess some type of divine spark; we love every man because God loves him.”
“How can we be affectionate towards a person whose avowed aim is to crush our very being and place innumerable stumbling blocks in our path? How can we like a person who is threatening our children and bombing our homes? That is impossible. But Jesus recognized that love is greater than like. When Jesus bids us to love our enemies, he is speaking neither or eros or philia; he is speaking of agape, understanding and creative, redemptive goodwill for all men. Only by following this way and responding with this type of love are we able to be children of our Father who is in heaven.”
“Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
“The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”
"Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.”
“By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.”
"An even more basic reason why we are commanded to love is expressed explicitly in Jesus’ words, ‘Love your enemies…that ye may be children of you Father which is in heaven.’ We are called to this difficult task in order to realize a unique relationship with God…We must love our enemies, because only by loving them can we know God and experience the beauty of his holiness.”
In an staggering passage asserting the transforming and evangelical power of love, King states, “To our most bitter opponents we say: ‘We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall will freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.”
“Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force, so beautifully exemplified in the life of our Christ, is the most potent instrument available in mankind’s quest for peace and security.”
Dr. King's statements resonate through time to remind us that whatever the conflict, whatever the struggle, love is stronger and can overcome evil. And though we cannot conjure up the strength to love, we are empowered by the Holy Spirit, the power that raised Jesus from the dead, and enabled to transform ourselves and others. Praise the Lord our God and Father for the embodiment of love, forgiveness and power in Jesus and the gift of the Spirit that can embolden and enliven us to die to self and live to him. Let us then, in the wake of news of Osama bin Laden's gruesome life and death, endeavor to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, that we may win their hearts and transform the world.
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