February 15, 2026 Epiphany Last
Donald Seekins
For many reasons, this seems to be an appropriate time to talk about Loving Our Enemies, which is often described as the most important tenet of the Christian religion. In Matthew 5: 43-48, Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount:
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.
As you may know, Verse 44 is printed on Nara Christ Church’s calendar for this year.
The theologian Tertullian wrote: “Our individual, extraordinary and perfect goodness consists in loving our enemies. To love one’s friends is common practice. To love one’s enemies is [true] only among Christians.”
Although many people, especially those who claim to be liberals, say that they don’t hate anyone, we all have a hard time fulfilling this commandment. This is true because we often see our enemies as not simply annoying or problematic, but as wrong, if not downright evil. An introvert disliking an extrovert for how he lays on the bullsh*t to impress other people may simply find the latter obnoxious and unpleasant to be around. An enemy wishes us harm. And we in turn often wish to harm him or her.
And while many of our enemies are imaginary, some enemies are, indeed, real.
Note that loving one’s enemy in the Christian sense does not mean following some kind of sweet self-help maxim like “if you really understood your enemy, you would come to love, or at least not hate, him or her.” I am told that some Japanese school teachers say to bullied students: “you should understand the students who bully you. They only want to become your friends.” In this case, I believe such a teacher’s aim is only to restore “harmony” and discipline in the classroom, not cultivate a real feeling of fellowship among his students.
Let’s look closer at the mysterious phrase, “love your enemies.” What is love? Among the ancient Greeks, many forms of love were defined, such as: eros, which includes sexual love but also other forms of attraction to another person, who might be charming, eloquent or talented; philia, or brotherly love, found between siblings or friends; storge, which is the love parents and children feel for each other; and the most important form of love in Christianity, agape, which is defined as “the highest form of love, or charity,” including the love of God for mankind and mankind’s love of God. Agape is most relevant, I think, for understanding why we should love our enemies. It seems to be similar to the Buddhist ideas of metta (loving kindness), karuna (compassion) and mudita (happiness because of the good fortune of others). It also may be close to the Confucian concept of ren (human-heartedness).
While some forms of love apply to specific persons, agape, metta, karuna and ren seem to be “big” ideas: they are connected to love of humanity as a whole, or love of the world (amor mundi).
However, we should be careful not to think that the Buddhist and Christian ideas of love are wholly equivalent. Buddhism is rooted in the idea that the self is illusory and that all sentient creatures are somehow unified in a greater Whole. Christianity affirms the reality of the person, the individual, even if he or she lives only a short time on the face of this earth.
Now, who are our enemies? As I mentioned, they are not simply annoying or tiresome people, although if we are obliged to associate with them, we may come to dislike such people intensely. But enemies must have free will. Only with free will can they be responsible for their hurtful actions toward us. If they – along with all other humans – actually lacked free will and were fully determined by outside forces, they would not be our enemies. They would behave, but have no real intentions. The sharp edge that is found in Jesus’ commandment “love your enemies” comes precisely from the conviction that they are responsible for their actions. In his words, they persecute us.
If our enemies are determined or conditioned rather than free to act, they are the same as wild beasts. Rabid dogs must be killed not because they are our foes but because they are extremely dangerous. Since the very dawn of the human race, we have had to struggle against predators such as saber toothed tigers, bears and wolves. But these predators over tens of thousands of years were not waging war against the human race with the goal of making us extinct. They didn’t hate us. They were just hungry.
In the United States – and increasingly in Japan as well – bitter polarization has emerged in society. The major causes seem to be economic hardship and a growing sense of insecurity among ordinary people. Decades ago, it was a point of pride in the United States to say that Republicans and Democrats could be good friends, even golf or drinking buddies. But now more and more people dislike – and even hate – those who hold opinions that are different from their own. Immigration has become a deeply divisive issue around the world. Some people hate immigrants. Some people hate people who hate immigrants. And politicians are always poised to take advantage of this.
In Japan, certain politicians have gained huge popular support through anti-foreign rhetoric. As a longtime western resident in this country, I admit I cannot love them in any meaningful way. Their words are deeply distressing to me. The pictures I see of Japanese people in Tokyo, especially young people, holding GAIJINS GO HOME! signs make me wish I lived in another, more hospitable country. Perhaps I am too thin-skinned, but thinking of them and their supporters, I admit I don’t know how Jesus would expect me to love them. By contrast, I dislike Donald Trump but my negative feelings toward him are intellectual – not a gut thing. I don’t want him to be President, but my darkest wish for Trump is for him to live the rest of his life in exile at Mar-a-Lago, totally ignored by everyone including Melania.
Some people have attempted to resolve the issue of loving our enemies by saying that they are deeply ignorant. We shouldn’t hate but pity them because they live in the darkness of prejudice and resentment. Some of our enemies may indeed be pitiful: for example, Laura Loomer, the woman who goes around Washington D.C. looking for people who are not 100% loyal to Trump, and then calls the President to inform on them. He apparently appreciates her running a one-woman Gestapo, but she wonders aloud what she will do once Trump is gone. “Without Trump,” she admits frankly, “I am nothing.”
Poor Laura.
Perhaps we can enlighten our enemies and make them better people. This is what teachers and ministers are supposed to do. But what if our enemies refuse to listen to us? What if they can’t comprehend what we are explaining to them? What if they are really evil?
Theologians know much more than I do about the true meaning of the commandment to Love Our Enemies. Supposedly if we loved them, we would no longer fight wars. But I don’t think that Jesus’ commandment is primarily concerned with the goal of bringing about world peace. Instead, He wants us not to be harmed by our own hatred toward others. Unrestrained hate has its very own dynamic; it turns us into monsters. As Nietzsche once said: “the hunter of monsters has to take care lest he turn into a monster himself.” Righteous indignation can transform us into replicas of the monsters we claim – in the name of justice – to hate.
But still, at the end of these remarks, I cannot understand how I as a Christian have a duty to love Sohei Kamiya or Kimi Onoda.
