Friends and Enemies

“Turn your enemies into friends by doing something nice for them.”

I read these words recently on a sign in front of a church by the side of a busy highway. On first and even the second and third reading these words seem innocuous enough. We all have enemies and life would certainly be more comfortable if they were friends.  Doing something nice for our enemies seems a small price to pay for the resulting peace, doesn’t it?

And it even might work - particularly if our enemy is a neighbour. We could snow blow the driveway or cut the grass a couple of times for them depending on the season. Surely that would change them into friends! If our enemy is in the workplace, bringing them a cup of coffee and a donut a few times a week or offering to help them with a last minute assignment should do the trick very nicely. 

But what if our enemy is a world away? What if our enemy is somebody different from us in appearance, ideology, religion? What could we do, or indeed even what do we want to do, that would be something ‘nice’ for them? Somehow sending instruments of ‘mass destruction’ their way seems to ensure that while they may not become our friends they will at least be  ‘dead’ enemies. but is that what we are called to do? 

Jesus is quoted as saying in Matthew 7.12:  ‘In everything do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets. This seems to go a little beyond being ‘nice’ to our enemies. We are told to treated EVERYONE else as we want to be treated … with no exceptions! No being nice only to those who it is convenient or safe to be nice to.

Can we stop the bombs from being dropped on our enemies, the armaments from being sold to those opposing them on the ground? No we can’t! But we can make our opinions known to others and to the government, influencing, where and however we can, the results of their deliberations. In this election year, we can make our views felt in the voting box on Election Day. We can lend our support to those organizations that try to alleviate suffering in the war-torn parts of the globe like the Canadian Red Cross [www.redcross.ca], Doctors without Borders [www.doctorswithoutborders.org]and the Canadian Lutheran World Relief [www.clwr.org] to name just a few. Isn’t that what we would want others to do if we were in their shoes? We need to go beyond doing that which is ‘nice’, and do that which might be uncomfortable or costly for us.

Where does your faith call you to go?