Love Those Who Persecute You

Have you ever read a passage of Scripture and wondered whether Jesus meant for it to be literally carried out, in every circumstance? I received a phone call two days ago from a kind neighbour in the mountains. “Your cabin has been broken into.  They stole your wood stove and broke the door frame.  I don’t think anything else was taken. It looks like the doors have been left open for about two weeks.”

Yesterday I was online checking my banking statements and noticed that $20,000.00 had been taken from my home owners line of credit. My bank card had been compromised and my accounts had been accessed.

In one sense it felt like too much in too short a time.  Give me bad news in smaller bites. 

My first thoughts were to recovering what had been stolen.  My second thoughts were the cost that will have to be incurred at a time when pay checks are scarce. The third round, I began to check to see how I was feeling towards the individuals who had invaded my life.  Was I mad?  Did I want to see them pay for what they did?  What emotions were beginning to guide me?

Strange how God seemed to take me to the Beatitudes (Matthew 5 & 6).  Love your enemies.  Pray for those who persecute you? - Have you ever wondered why? My first prayer might have gotten it a little bit wrong.  It started out something like, “Get them God.”

One of my favourite movies that no one will want to watch is “Angel and the Bad Man”; the 50’s version with John Wayne. Angel is a Quaker girl who is falling in love with a killer. They are walking in her fields when Wayne notices dried up irrigation ditches.  Explaining why they were dry, Angel tells of a man who owns the water rights who had diverted the water back onto his own land.  She also mentions that they are praying.

Wayne assumes they are praying that God will send the water again.  She answers, “No, we are praying for the man.  Every day he holds back the water, he is damaging his soul.” - I’ve never forgotten the profound truth behind that statement. They loved this man more than their need for water. 

When Jesus elevates the second greatest command (love your neighbour as yourself) to the same level as the first (love God completely), you wonder why Jesus would imply that my neighbour is as important as God is?  Yet if I don’t love my neighbour as myself, who do you suppose I love more?  And if I love myself more, then how can I love God with all my heart, all my soul, all my strength, and all my mind?  I simply cannot love God the way I should if I can’t begin to love my neighbour as much as I love myself.  But if I truly love God, then my heart will also long to love what he loves and care for what he cares for.  

I’ve begun to pray for the souls of the people who have stolen from me. I’ve begun to ask God to spare them from a lifestyle that is lazy, that exploits and doesn’t want to work.  I am asking God to use this experience to change them, introduce himself to them and to set them free from a path that will ultimately lead to their own loss.

Since then I have been able to have this conversation with the RCMP and now with you.

There has to be a willingness to think differently if we are ever to understand what Paul meant when he pleaded for us to have renewed minds (Romans 12).  We don’t have to live in a box of an eye for an eye.  We can rise above it.  We can become individuals who bring reconciliation to a broken system.  But it all comes down to how much I honestly love God.

Comments

[Bena]

lots of good insights: what is more important in my life? the money or the people? how come we claim to love God when we can't love our neighbors? (or when we value our money, our lives more important than theirs?) so many times we read the passage (about loving God and loving your neighbors) and nod away, but it is completely irrelevant to us in actual life, we make excuses for ourselves why we can't love some people. It's not about us really, it's about God.
Thanks Dave for living out what you preach and believe so others like me can be encouraged.