David McElroy

Nothing that Jesus taught was as difficult for human beings — then or now — as when He said, “…love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”

Much of what Jesus taught was exactly opposite of the way of this world. Much of what He taught was at odds with what the religious leaders of His day allowed. Roughly 2,000 years later, those things are still true. Despite billions of people claiming to follow Jesus, most of us don’t exhibit the love He taught. And the religious leaders of our day still find ways to justify hating — and even killing — those we consider enemies.

I saw a casual example tonight of hate for political enemies. The details don’t matter. You’ve seen plenty of examples, so you know what I’m talking about.

We justify such things so easily — even those of us who claim to follow Jesus. It’s almost as though we believe there’s an asterisk in His teaching during the Sermon on the Mount — as though we believe there’s an exception for us in the footnotes of the page that says, “Unless your enemies are really bad people, of course.”

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You can’t live halfway between love and indifference. One or the other has to win in the end.

I’ve been thinking about this more and more lately because I continue to struggle to love in the ways I’d like to. A year ago this week, I wrote something fairly long about love in the broadest sense — and it’s something I’m still trying to come to terms with.

The natural way of this world is to ultimately experience something worse than hate. It’s for indifference, but it’s broader than that. The way of the world leads to a cold, hardened and callous heart. Hate can sometimes be part of it, but in its most extreme form, it’s indifference and a complete lack of feeling anything.

I believe we ultimately face two choices.

On one side, there is turmoil, anger, envy and judgment. Most “realistic people” — who have had their hearts hardened by disappointment in others — default to living closer to hate than to love, but ultimately they settle into a cold indifference.

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It was already raining lightly when I left the office late Friday afternoon. By the time I merged onto the interstate, the gentle summer rain had turned into a gushing torrent of water. Somewhere along I-459 south of Birmingham, I could barely seen the tail lights of the car creeping along in front of me.

Traffic was bumper to bumper in all three lanes of each direction. We inched along dangerously. I was afraid of what I might hit as I kept going forward, but I was equally afraid of being hit in the rear if I didn’t move fast enough.

I simply couldn’t see what was going on — and I was afraid that trying to pull off the road was no better since I couldn’t see anything and others couldn’t see me.

So I moved along blindly — barely moving — as buckets of rain continued to fall from the sky.

And then I saw something that seemed like a faint shaft of light in the sky off to my right. The rain still beat down furiously, but where was that light coming from?

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